Kurayami to Hikari
by TheFishAndTheBird
Summary: When Toshinori Yagi moves to a new apartment on the edges of Minato, Tokyo, he does so with the intent of not drawing attention to himself. This backfires as he develops a friendship with the woman who lives above him and is complicated further as he starts to interact with her in his hero form as well. Reviews are appreciated :)
1. The New Guy Downstairs

Author's Note: This story was originally posted on this website, but I pulled it for a variety of reasons. Since then I've been updating it on AO3 and if you frequent that website I highly recommend reading it there instead because I embed illustrations and the story is going to be further along for a while. That said, I've been using this website for nearly half of my life, and kind of started to miss it, so I'm going to _try _posting it here again. I did make a new account because the old one has been getting spam and reviews telling me to update other stories.

Thanks! Hope you enjoy!

Chapter One:  
The New Guy Downstairs, who Probably Does Drugs

It was an average looking apartment on the edges of Minato, Tokyo. The building was on the older side and gave off an unassuming impression and was therefore perfect for Toshinori Yagi. He didn't want to draw attention.

'Toshinori.' How long had it been since he even went by that name? Long enough so that it felt strange to sign the lease with it. Although even that had been slightly less awkward then getting a job in All Might's Secretarial Office and having business cards printed with his real name on them. Once it had been the only name he had, but when he became All Might, Yagi had all but disappeared. He'd never really planned on having a secret identity, but now he didn't really have much of a choice, just like he didn't have much of a choice to move out here. He couldn't exactly go back to his old life, now that he looked like…well like _this _more often then he looked like All Might. It would raise too many questions.

So here he was. Standing outside an apartment that practically faded into the background of the city. No one would expect All Might to live in a place like this…but Yagi probably would. Well, when it came down to it, anyone who saw him in this state probably wouldn't expect Yagi to live in a place like this either. In this emaciated body he probably looked like he belonged under a bridge in a cardboard box or else in a hospital bed somewhere.

Toshinori coughed, the sound muffled by the oversized sleeve of a sweatshirt that looked as if it could have fit five more of him in it and eyed the moving van wearily as a few men moved some very modest looking furniture into his very modest new apartment. In truth, even though All Might probably gave off the impression of someone who was all flash and grandeur he'd never owned much in the way of personal possessions. In order to have a personal life, one needed to have time for a personal life and All Might had never had time. It was for this reason that most of what he had brought was as unassuming as his new life had to be. The only thing that could link him to All Might was a couple of mementos that, if discovered could be explained away by his front as All Might's secretary and possibly more damning; his costumes…although even then he could probably make up a story about having them pressed or mended or something. He'd already moved them into the apartment prior to the van getting there and had stashed them in one of the closets in a couple of garment bags behind the rest of his over-sized clothes.

Toshinori coughed again, wincing at the taste of iron. The early autumn air was doing unpleasant things to his remaining lung. He retreated into his new apartment, standing aside briefly to allow the movers past him as they went back out to the truck to retrieve the rest of his stuff. None of the men seemed to be all that bothered that he wasn't helping with some of the heavier stuff, but that was not surprising. He didn't really look like someone who could lift a box comfortably, let alone a couch. When inside, he headed to the tiny kitchen and searched briefly through a small cardboard box, before pulling out a tin of decaf sencha tea and his kyusu.

XXX

It was early enough in the morning so that only a small light showed on the horizon. Nevertheless, despite the hour, a cheap alarm clock started going off next to the twin sized bed which took up 1/3 of the narrow room. It had to be loud to cover the susurrus of noise caused by the fan to one side and a small flat screen television turned to a channel broadcasting kitschy shopping programs. The sort of thing designed to be background noise.

Rin grumbled under her blankets and fumbled at the alarm before finally hitting a button and then scrambling to hit it again, this time more awake because she had accidentally turned on the radio, which blared so loudly that whatever was being said sounded distorted and hellish.

She looked at the window. Even in the meager light she could tell it was overcast. After a moment she took a deep breath, holding it for half a second as if to test something before getting up and beginning her morning routine. It had been about the same for two years now. She took a quick shower, put her wet hair up in small messy half knot, dressed in a pair of jeans, a t-shirt with a faded logo on it and pulled on a pair of well-worn hiking boots. She skipped breakfast but stuffed a handful of hard candies into a sturdy half apron before tying it around her waist and grabbing her jacket as she walked out the door.

Rin sighed as she descended the stairs of her building and saw the moving van. There were only two apartments per building and four buildings made up the entirety of her apartment complex. They were at the end of a street in a neighborhood with small squat houses. The apartment below her had been empty for the last two weeks. Two blessed, quiet weeks. She'd put up with the last inhabitants for close to eight months before they'd…presumably moved out. It was hard to say, she didn't really bother getting to know her neighbors outside of the occasional acknowledgment that it was a good morning, all evidence of the contrary aside. She'd only noticed after a week had gone by and she hadn't heard any shouting, so either they'd been kicked out, left in a hurry or killed each other...whatever the reason the silence had been nice.

She caught a brief glimpse of the man she assumed was her new neighbor as he was heading into his apartment and grimaced slightly. The neighborhood Rin lived in was called Ikigai…probably named many years prior when it wasn't quite so worn and tired. It wasn't a 'bad' neighborhood per se. There were certainly worse areas…some of them as near as a few blocks away, some deeper in the city. As it was, there wasn't a lot of crime in Ikigai…at least none of the flashy stuff. There were rarely villain attacks, there weren't any gangs and even break ins were at a minimum and that was because it just wasn't worth it.

It was a place for people who had given up on finding something better, who could afford to stay out of the worst areas, but didn't aspire to do more then that. Because of this, crime was limited to the stuff that the police still dealt with; vandalism, domestic abuse, drugs and petty theft. Drugs seemed to be the favorite though, which is why the first thought that came to mind when she saw her new neighbor was 'drugs, and not the casual kind.'

He was so thin that 'skeletal' was an appropriate descriptor, his eyes were sunken in to the point of creating deep shadows on his face, his hair looked like it hadn't seen a comb in decades and he was wearing clothes that most likely had been obtained from a shelter or some other charity organization as it would be difficult to imagine why else someone who looked like a walking coat hanger would don what looked like XXL garments.

'Great,' she thought as she pulled her jacket on. 'With any luck he'll at least be a quiet junkie.'

The day was indeed overcast and there was a chill in the air. Rin double checked to ensure she'd remembered to pocket her inhaler and then after verifying the comforting shape, popped a random hard candy into her mouth and headed down the street.

XXX

Toshinori paid the movers and thanked them with a bow, before shutting the door to his new apartment and taking in the room. By now the sun was up, but the windows were narrow and let in very little light, which was a shame…it gave the apartment a dreary feeling.

He began going through the boxes set up against the wall, starting with his collection of movies, which he began setting on the shelves near his television. He turned on the news in the mean time and let the background noise wash over him as he committed to the mindless task, his long fingers curling around each title, reading them before setting them aside. He owned a number of Japanese and American films, though, in truth he hadn't watched half of them. He had a habit of picking out stuff that looked interesting and then letting it sit for months on the shelf as his schedule rarely allowed for much free time and even in those rare moments when he did have free time he almost always had the news on just in case. Well…he supposed that might change a little now. Toshinori frowned a little.

He was brought out of his thoughts as, on the news a story about revitalizing old and broken down areas in the city was interrupted by an excitable looking newscaster who started to stammer his way through a breaking story involving a hostage situation in the Shinagawa train station. Toshinori set down the stack of movies and headed towards the closet in the back of his small bedroom. He pulled out one of the garment bags, pushing aside the rest of his clothes in the process and unzipped it, pulling out the massive suit within. After shedding his sweatshirt, he pulled it over his clothes. It was day time, best to have his civilian clothes handy.

He peeked outside nervously to ensure that there was no chance of an audience…but then, it was still early and no one seemed to be around. Once satisfied, he stepped out and moved to the narrow area between the buildings, transforming in the process, his suit no longer billowing around his skeletal frame, instead fitting snuggly on All Might's massive body. A few seconds later he was on top of another building several blocks away and heading quickly towards Shinagawa.

XXX

Rin was a creature of habit. She liked it that way. This was why she almost always stopped at the same café on her way to the park and bought the same blend of coffee. It wasn't very good coffee, she made much better at home with her little one cup pour-over, but that took time and it was rare she had enough time to invest in good coffee before work.

She worked as a groundskeeper at a park a few blocks down from her neighborhood. It was decent enough work. In the spring, autumn and summer it was often pleasant and sure as hell beat being cooped up in an office building or retail establishment and most favorably, it did not require prolonged contact with other human beings. People visited the park of course, but she could more or less ignore them, instead focusing on mowing, pruning and watering the plants, removing dead or decaying foliage and erasing the evidence that other humans frequented the park via picking up the trash they left behind and occasionally removing the graffiti that decorated some of the sad crumbling statues that the park had set up. In the autumn she raked leaves, in the early spring she planted new trees and plants and in the winter she shoveled the paths. She worked in the morning and was often done by early afternoon.

Today it looked as if it were going to be a longer shift, as today there was graffiti, most likely left by some adolescent who was probably not even out of junior high judging by the nature of the graffiti and the height with which it adorned the statues. The statues themselves were dull. The sort one might find in miniature in a souvenir shop for tourists; pagoda lanterns, Neko and tanuki statues and on the larger side, statues depicting men on horses, assorted deities and standing out from the others, and honestly looking quite out of place, a large statue of All Might with his big stupid smile. The park wasn't nearly as big or grand as the parks farther into the city, so it was most likely poor compared to others, but his headquarters was located in Minato so presumably it couldn't be helped that even her small park had to have the symbol of peace immortalized in stone.

What was annoying…and really, the logical half of her mind reasoned it shouldn't have been given that it meant less work for her, was that the All Might statue almost never acquired graffiti…as if vandals were frightened the man might poof out of thin air the second someone attempted to write an expletive across his giant chiseled torso. It was so illogical. The goddess Amaterasu had acquired more then her share of profanity over the years, but All Might? Somehow, he was beyond vandalism.

She sighed and after grabbing the equipment she needed to begin cleaning off the poorly written graffiti, she knelt down next to a sad stone woman in a kimono to wash the unflattering description off of its surface. Yet another indication of the vandals age was the fact that they seemed to only take her gender into account and not the fact that someone so very clothed and depicted as being on the elder side would not fit such a description. They had probably giggled as they wrote it.

XXX

There was a group of police officers and a few pro heroes gathered near the west exit of the Shinagawa train station. The massive interior was lit only by the windows lining the pedestrian walkway. The rest of the power was off, and the trains were still. It had happened quickly, ruling out the possibility that it had been some lone nut who had simply had one too many bad experiences on their morning commute. This had been organized.

There had been chaos after the lights went off, but now it was eerily quiet.

The few pros that were there had already been in the train station or very near to it when the power had gone off. The group consisted of Uwabami, who had her hand on her hip and was eyeing the darkness of the station calmly, Fourth Kind who was crossing all four of his arms and having a whispered conversation with a police officer and a third pro who looked considerably more nervous than the other two. Nevertheless, he was the one to break the silence.

"We can't just stand here," he said under his breath. "I say we split up and launch a rescue from there."

Compared to the other two, he was a relative unknown. Both turned to look at him.

"I'm sorry, who are you exactly?" Uwabami said wearily. She had come to the city to shoot a commercial the day before and had wound up having to stay in a hotel overnight after the recording had gone long. She was just now heading back only for the station to come under attack. Despite her penchant for the limelight, she was a pro and certainly could perform as such, but she was still in a fowl mood for being held up.

"Uh, well I just started…I haven't really been in any major incidents…"

"Right, exactly how do you propose we 'split up?'" she continued while waving her hand at the vast pedestrian walkway. "I can use my quirk to locate people and capture enemies, but there's a whole train station of civilian hostages and dozens of platforms and trains. I'm not a combat specialist and I don't commonly do stealth missions."

"I'm specialized in hand to hand combat," Fourth kind said with a sigh, while uncrossing one set of his arms and brandishing his hands palm up. "but I'm not really the stealthy sort either. Besides, Uwabami's right, there are too many hostages and too many places to hide."

The rookie hero was young and did indeed look like he might be fresh out of the position of sidekick…or possibly still in the position of sidekick.

"There's three of us…surely we can…"

"We don't know how many attackers there are, first we need a plan," Uwabami interrupted while crossing her arms. Before she could say anything else a booming and jovial voice cut through the tension, making several of the police and the younger pro jump in response.

"Worry not, for I am here!" It shouldn't be possible for a man of All Might's size to enter a room without someone noticing. And while All might wasn't stealthy and often didn't need to be, he was very very fast.

"All Might!" One of the police said, his voice awash with relief as the big man stepped forward. The effect seemed to spread throughout the rest of the small group as well. Even Uwabami and Fourth Kind seemed to relax by a couple degrees.

"Be so kind as to fill me in?" He asked, seemingly directing the question at no one in particular, his smile visible despite the meager light.

"The power went out about forty minutes ago," one of the police officers said. "All of the civilians that were waiting in the station evacuated with the staff, but the trains that were coming in and going out at the time shut down. We're pretty sure everyone who was inside them are still there and whoever is behind this is most likely with them. We know there is more then one attacker, but we don't know how many people are involved."

"Have they contacted you at all…made any demands?"

"No demands…just a warning not to approach."

"Your quirk can locate people. Very useful in this situation!" All Might said to Uwabami, who raised her eyebrow. "Are the hostages just in the trains?"

"It seems so. They're all in small groups. I can't tell the difference between the hostages and the attackers though."

"How many trains are currently in the station?

"About half…" Fourth Kind said. He had been going over the train schedule with the police.

"If you give me a map I may be able to tell you where they are…" Uwabami added.

"Shouldn't be a problem! There's an info desk right there!" All Might said while pointing to one side of the station.

"Right," Uwabami said sweetly, "glad you're here, hon, but could you keep it down just a touch?" All Might's fixed smile showed just a twinge of bashfulness before it was back in full. He gave her a thumbs up.

"Ah, sorry," he replied, his voice dropping from it's usual cadence to a whisper that still somehow carried across the room. "I don't recognize you? You're a pro?" he added while turning to the younger hero, who had been watching All Might slack jawed. The young man licked his lips and nodded.

"Uh, yeah…I'm Junichiro Sumitomo," he said and then looked vaguely embarrassed about giving his real name instead of a hero name.

"What's your specialty?"

"Uh…I can…I can fade into the shadows…surprise people…but uh…to be honest I haven't done a lot of professional work on my own…"

"Ah well, this seems like a good time to start," All Might said. "let's get these people out of here."

XXX

The lights inside the train that had been heading for Shibuya had flickered briefly before dying forty minutes prior. The doors had shut, and the patrons had been forced into their seats and on the floor. There was a chorus of whimpering, crying, fragments of whispered prayers and the like. It was warm and dark.

One of the attackers was standing in front of the group of frightened passengers with his back to the door at the back of the train. His hand was on one of the metal bars in front of a seat…or rather his hand was welded in the metal which had traveled up his forearm. Likewise, whatever tile or marble made up the floor had overtaken his right leg, fixing him in place. His other hand was outstretched towards the hostages.

"Would you all please just shut up!" He shouted, causing a whimper from within the small crowd. "How long is he going to make us wait…it's getting hot in here!"

There was another attacker on the other side leaning against the door that was separating them from the conductor.

"Calm down, everything is under cont-" the sound of the door being ripped off its hinges caused the comment to die in his throat. For a moment there was only darkness beyond and then a blur and the man who had been complaining about the heat a moment before slumped down, unconscious. His associate stared slack jawed as All Might rose slightly, illuminated by the light from the ruined door behind him. "Stay back or I'll-" was as far as he got before he too crumpled to the ground against the conductor's door after a sudden burst of movement which caused the train to rock slightly and a burst of wind to travel through the group of hostages. It all happened in a matter of seconds.

"Everything's all right now," All Might said, catching himself before he spoke too loudly. Instead he tried to convey his usual confidence in a low tone. It perhaps didn't have quite the same effect as it would have if he'd spoken it loudly, but the shear spectacle of All Might, standing larger then life and smiling made up for his whispered tones. Slowly the mood began to change and ripple through the group as the new situation dawned on them. The big hero put his fingers up to his smile to signal quiet. "Sit tight for a moment while we clear the rest of the station," he added as he threw both attackers over his shoulders, prying up the man who had attached himself to the train with little difficulty.

In another few minutes the pros had moved through the rest of the trains and had taken out the remaining attackers. In the eight trains that had hostages in them, the attackers were spread out thin, with most having only one villain and two of the trains having none at all.

"There's no one but civilians in this one," Uwabami, said while tapping her ear. They'd borrowed ear pieces from the police to make communication easier. She was standing in the train that should have been heading to Kamakura, closest to the east exit. The people inside the train were watching the development with interest. "They didn't even realize the station was under attack."

"Anyone take down someone with a quirk that could shut down or disrupt technology?" Fourth Kind asked. He, All Might and the younger pro were standing back in the pedestrian walkway as the police tied up the mostly unconscious attackers.

"I'm afraid I didn't take the time to ask," All Might said, while eyeing a clock nearby and counting in his head. "No worries, I'm sure their quirks will be uncovered in questioning."

There was a squeal and the sound of something heavy moving. Usually the sound would have gone unnoticed in the bustling train station, becoming a part of the background noise, but with everything shut down it was far more conspicuous.

"What was that?" Fourth Kind said while eyeing the interior of the station.

"Uh, the train in the Yokosuka/Sobu line just took off!" A police officer shouted from further down the walkway.

"Uh, isn't that were Miss Uwabami was…huh?" Sumitomo paused as he eyed his surroundings. All Might was gone.

XXX

The overcast day had made way for rain. It was a cold autumn rain, made even more abrasive by the wind that had also picked up. The train hadn't been able to get far when All Might caught up, or rather overtook it. He'd leapt overtop of the locomotive and had landed on the tracks ahead of it.

All Might's smile took on a brief grimace as he turned back towards the oncoming train and was barraged by the rain. For anyone else, even most pro heroes, it probably would have looked suicidal. As the train neared, gaining speed, All Might raised his right fist and punched the air in front of him. For a moment, the wind trajectory changed direction and the rain stopped in that immediate area before flowing back a second later. The train creaked against the force, slowing down to the point that All Might could step forward and grab the front of it. There was another loud, long creak as the train seemed to try to keep going forward before it came to a complete halt.

He sighed. He probably could have stopped it even at full speed, but not without a lot more damage. This was, of course a city and no doubt the news had kept up with the whole ordeal so it was unsurprising that he now had an audience. Despite the cold rain, now a full-blown storm and the aching in his side, which had been steadily growing in the last hour, his smile returned in full as he began to push the train back towards the station.

"Think you almost lost this," he said to one of station supervisors, who had joined the police and was watching in awe.

They got the door open and Uwabami, looking frustrated, helped get the passengers out. No one was injured but there definitely was some confusion and shock. Once the last civilian exited, All Might ducked inside and headed towards the front of the train. Uwabami followed him.

"I tried to get into the operator's cab when we took off, but the door's shut tight, something you could help with perhaps?" She said, her voice taking on a sweet calculating tone. "I can't sense a heat signature or movement from inside," she added.

The door didn't pose much of an obstacle for him. He set it aside and then froze for a moment. There was indeed someone inside. There was a man in the seat. Judging by his uniform he was a conductor…had been a conductor. He was slumped over in the chair and his face was covered by a plain featureless mask with a bit of Japanese writing on it.

Uwabami slipped around him and approached the man. She removed the mask carefully, a somber look on her face.

"He's dead…it looks like he's been dead for hours," she said as she turned the mask over in her hand. There was just a single word written on it in kanji script; 'Life.'

XXX

It had been a long day. About part way into scrubbing the graffiti off of the statues it had begun to rain hard. It had stormed like the sky had something to prove and the wind had gotten a say for good measure. By the time she'd finished her work for the day and had headed home she had been soaked and freezing.

She slipped out of her clothes, cringing as she peeled off her shoes and socks with an unpleasant squelching noise. After once again donning dry clothing she went to the kitchen and pulled out her rice cooker, absently turning on her television in the process before she began to search through her cabinets for a half bag of rice she'd put away the day before. After a moment, when she was aware of the hissing noise emanating from her television she frowned and eyed it wearily, greeted only with static. Rin picked up the remote and pressed a few buttons before sighing and heading towards her door.

There was an old satellite dish set up outside her apartment. It had been there since before she moved in, presumably having belonged to whoever had lived there before her. Rather then removing it or upgrading to something from this century she had just made use of it. When she wanted to watch something that wasn't the news or some horrible television drama she watched movies.

The rain outside had finally subsided for the most part, now just a light sprinkle. Rin walked out onto the small landing that could perhaps generously be called a porch and eyed the satellite dish, confirming her suspicions. It had been knocked off kilter by the wind. She picked up a chair she had set out several months prior when she still spent time sitting outside.

The satellite dish was just out of reach, fixed to the brick near the roof. She positioned the chair carefully at the edge of the porch and climbed onto it, cursing slightly as she reached up towards the rusted dish and managing to only brush it with her fingertips.

"Do you need any help?" Rin almost fell off the chair, managing to catch herself on the divider and avoiding what would most likely not have been a fatal fall, but would certainly have been unpleasant. She cast her exasperated gaze towards the sound of the voice.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you!"

It was her new neighbor. He was standing in front of the building with what looked like a bag of groceries in one hand and an umbrella in the other. He was also wearing a light jacket that, like his other clothes was definitely intended for someone much larger.

"Are you all right?" He added, a look of concern on his gaunt face.

"Yeah," Rin said with a grunt as she stepped off the chair, while trying to keep most of the annoyance out of her voice. "I was just…my satellite dish got knocked around by the storm."

"Would you like a hand?" he asked again. His voice was deep and friendly.

When she was a little younger, Rin probably would have told him to fuck off. She'd had very little tact in junior high and highschool, but as an adult and someone that mostly preferred to avoid attention if possible she'd learned the value of not telling people to fuck off or rather telling them in a way that was less likely to cause offense…especially if they were neighbors and could make her life difficult.

"Uh…it's not a big deal," she started.

"It's no trouble," he said and started up the stairs. Rin frowned. Ok, so maybe 'fuck off' would have worked better against this guy. Closer up, she noticed something else about him apart from his gaunt frame and his oversized clothes. He was quite possibly the tallest person she'd ever seen. If anything, this just added to the incongruity of how thin he was.

He put away his umbrella and set his grocery bag down before reaching the top of the stairs.

"That's an old one," he said, while indicating the satellite dish which was covered in rust, his voice was still pleasant. Rin was beginning to reevaluate her initial impression of him being a junkie, mainly because in her experience heavy drug users tended to show some kind of indication that they were on drugs; twitching, tremors, excess movement, excess chattiness…and this guy just seemed…friendly and maybe a little tired.

"Yeah," she said, conceding to the situation. "It was here when I moved in."

He stepped underneath it, moving the chair a bit and reaching out for the dish.

_Small talk, _Rin thought…that's what normal people did…they made small talk.

"You just moved in?" She said, seizing on the most obvious point of conversation.

"Yes, this morning," he said as he grabbed the dish and pulled it back into position. "Is this right?"

"Looks right," she replied with a shrug.

"Do you want to check if it's working?" He asked before coughing into his sleeve.

"If it isn't, I can keep messing with it…you've moved it close enough, so I can reach now." For a moment, it seemed as if he was going to insist that she check, but he appeared to reconsider, perhaps catching the impatience in her voice. For some reason she felt a twinge of guilt. Perhaps because so far, he really was giving off the impression of genuine kindness. And it was perhaps this feeling of guilt that pushed her to introduce herself, something she rarely did without some prompting.

"Uh thanks, I'm Rin…Hajime…" she said the last after a brief pause. He gave her a tired smile and extended his hand.

"Toshinori Yagi, it's nice to meet you miss Hajime," she shook his hand, which was both weirdly large and so skinny she could feel the bones under his skin. "Have a nice evening, good luck with your satellite dish," he added as he picked up his umbrella and shopping bag again and headed back down the stairs, coughing again as he did.

Rin returned to her apartment. So probably not a junkie…which meant that there was something else wrong with him. Again, she felt a slight twinge of guilt, this time for making a snap assumption that he was on hard drugs when it looked like the more likely explanation was that he was sick. Still, he seemed nice and if he wasn't a junkie that greatly improved the likelihood that he would not be a disruptive neighbor. Of course, now that she knew his name, that meant neighborly greetings were probably going to be a thing now. Oh well, she'd gladly take that over nightly disruptions to her routine.

What Rin did not know at the time was that her routine, as it were, was going to be more then interrupted. Indeed, meeting Toshinori Yagi was going to disrupt her status quo in a way that would change the rest of her life, but then…All Might seemed to have that effect on people.


	2. Shoganai

Chapter Two:

Shoganai

Rin woke up at 3 am gasping. She scrambled at the table at her side, knocking her alarm clock off in the process and hearing it crash to the floor, before her hand closed around her inhaler. Each breath she was taking came out in a hum. She raised the inhaler up to her mouth and pulled the trigger and then slowly began to relax. After a few moments she closed her eyes as she felt the tightness in her chest slowly recede.

"Shit," she said to the empty room, blinking in the darkness. There was a part of her that knew…knew this wasn't her asthma…but it didn't really make much of a difference because the rest of her rarely listened to the sensible part of her. It happened occasionally, she'd wake up every night for a week or two…once a whole month in a panic…then it would disappear for a while. Her asthma certainly didn't make it better, but she knew the difference. This was her stupid brain punishing her.

Once her trembling subsided, she threw her bare feet over the side of her bed and searched along the floor for her stricken alarm clock, placing it back on the table when she found it. Afterwards she headed to her living room. Rin went to bed pretty early on most nights, so she'd managed to get about four hours of sleep. She knew these episodes well enough to know that she either wouldn't get back to sleep of she tried right now, or else it would take an hour before her brain allowed her to. Drinking sometimes helped with this. Sure, it was morning, but hey, look at it from another direction and it could also be considered night still.

She opened her fridge and was about to grab a beer before she hesitated with a groan. Rin wasn't a social person generally, but she did have friends…well friend anyways and she'd promised 'friend' that she'd try something…healthier the next time she woke up like this. She closed the fridge again and began searching her cabinets for tea.

XXX

While Rin had gotten about four hours of sleep by the time 3 am rolled around, Toshinori was still staring at his ceiling, his large slender hands resting on his stomach. As a pro hero…and the number one pro hero at that, he'd had his share of sleepless nights. He probably suffered from at least mild insomnia…and the weird hours that hero work required didn't help. After his injury his hours had been reduced by necessity, but his sleep hadn't improved much…if anything it had gotten worse. The damage to his respiratory organs ensured that after especially active days he sometimes had trouble breathing while he was laying down, not to mention his habit of coughing up blood. Some of his worst nights involved waking up choking…probably the most unpleasant way he'd ever woken up…well…minus some of the days back when he was still in the hospital.

Tonight, it wasn't his breathing that was keeping him up though. He was thinking about Shinagawa. As All Might he had a few points of pride; he never lost a fight, he smiled no matter how bad things got and once he was on the scene, he never lost a civilian. After examining the corpses…and there had been more then one, this was _technically_ still the case. As Uwabami had pointed out…they had been dead for hours…so they were dead before the train station even came under attack. They had all been wearing those masks with the kanji script on them as well. What was really upsetting though, apart from, of course the fact that they were dead civilians, was that _the trains had been running while the men were dead. _Even leaving out the fact that the train he'd stopped had taken off with a very deceased conductor, things had been going along normally in the station until the lights went off. The most logical explanation was that it was some kind of quirk, but after investigating everyone who was caught at the scene it was apparent that none of them had the ability to shut down the power in the train station to begin with and nothing they had explained the dead men.

All Might had been a pro for a long time and he could feel a twinge of uneasiness growing in the pit of his non-existent stomach. A train station in _his_ city with no indication of what the culprits wanted. Whoever had instigated it had most likely not been apprehended unless the criminals had been extremely talented actors, the weird masks…this was someone with purpose…something to prove and villains with purpose were always so much more dangerous then the people who just wanted money or status because they could be worryingly passionate about that purpose.

Toshinori took a deep breath, resisting the urge to cough as he sat up in bed. He needed to get his mind off of this if he was ever going to get to sleep. He walked out into his living room, considered turning on the tv and then stopped himself…he would just change to the news…not helpful. Instead he lowered himself onto the floor, wincing at how stiff his long withered limbs were and opened one of the boxes he had begun unpacking the day before.

XXX

Rin awoke on her couch five hours later with the realization that she could hear her alarm going off in the other room. She cursed as she rolled onto the floor and hurried into the bedroom to end the obnoxious sound. She cursed again when she saw the time. She was running late, which meant either no shower or no coffee. She weighed her options and then opted out of the shower. It was tempting, especially since she'd finished her night on the couch, making it so a low ebb of pain was sitting in her bones and muscles, but that would get worked out with activity, whereas if she skipped the coffee she would regret it for the rest of the morning.

She threw on her clothes, picking stuff that was comfortable and ideal for working outside, grabbed her candy and her inhaler and ran out the door. If she'd had the gift of foresight, she would have just called in sick. Yesterday's graffiti had been nothing compared to what today had in store.

XXX

Toshinori had never managed to get to sleep. On the positive side, this meant he'd gotten a decent amount of unpacking done…the downside of course being his current exhaustion. His health was bad enough without restless nights.

Once the sun had risen and it became obvious that his mind would not shut off and allow him to relax, he went to the kitchen to force himself to eat breakfast. Meals were another thing he couldn't afford to miss…and yet something he so often did, again, because of hero work. Ideally, he should be eating small meals every couple of hours in order to maintain some sort of healthy weight, but he'd gotten into a habit back when he was healthy of going several hours without a meal because of how busy he was. And it made sense…you could hardly stop and have a bite in the middle of breaking up a hostage situation or fighting a villain. Back then, however he could always make it up when he did get downtime. Now his situation was a lot more delicate. He barely ever felt hungry; partly because he didn't have a stomach anymore and partly because of frequent bouts of nausea caused by chronic coughing, the taste of blood and yes…probably because he skipped meals so often. But even on those rare occasions when he did have an appetite, he couldn't eat much. A 'healthy' weight had come and gone. Now he just barely ate enough so that he didn't collapse.

He settled on miso soup and a small portion of rice. Because he didn't have much of an appetite on most days, he didn't invest much of his time to cooking and tended to buy pre-packaged meals, instant stuff and frozen food, so his miso soup came out of a packet.

Once this and the rice was done he sat down on his couch and switched his tv to the news.

XXX

It was the third Monday of September, which meant it was Respect for the Aged Day and the park had more of a crowd then usual. Much like the statues, in another vain attempt at staying relevant, her park tended to try and throw celebrations for a lot of holidays. The idea behind this particular event was…well elderly people liked parks, right? She was, thankfully not involved with any of the prep work that usually went into these events and instead just cleaned up afterwards. Some might consider this worse…and it was by no means her favorite thing to do, but she preferred to be around the echoes of a crowd rather then the crowd itself.

Currently she was wondering the paths, away from said crowd, killing time doing her other work until the people dispersed. At least the weather was better then the day before. It was cool and crisp, but the sun was shining brightly and the trees were changing into their autumn colors…a good day to be at the park, working or not, although that did mean she'd be raking leaves soon.

While she was walking down one of the paths she noticed a young girl picking some of the flowers near the benches. They weren't wild flowers, Rin had planted them herself earlier in the year. They weren't really for picking. She scowled. Most likely the girl had wondered away from a parent or something. When the child saw Rin, she gave her a bright smile. The young girl was wearing a very bright and colorful pokadot dress with white hose and bright red shoes.

"I'm picking flowers for my grandpa," she said proudly, while brandishing the poor stricken Morning Glorys. After a moment, the girl's smile seemed to drain a little and Rin had to mentally check herself; let's see she was…holding a pair of very large shears, clearly annoyed about the flowers, glaring at a child. Rin shoved the shears in her apron pocket and returned the girls smile. It probably wasn't especially convincing…she had never really gotten the hang of smiling when she didn't really mean it, it tended to come off as awkward, pained or like she was bearing her teeth.

"They're very pretty," she said. Despite the fact that her smile was probably rather weak, this seemed to appease the girl somewhat. Rin let her smile fade into a much more honest expression of weariness and she pointed over towards the benches nearer to where the rest of the people were gathered. "There are Kosumosu over there, they'd look nice with the ones you have."

The young girl brightened up again and started over towards where Rin had indicated, pausing only to hand Rin one of her flowers shyly. Rin turned it in her hand before sighing. Well, winter was coming up soon, so it wasn't as if they were going to last much longer anyways.

"Shoganai," She said under her breath as she pulled out her shears once more and headed towards where most of the statues were gathered.

She'd managed to scrub nearly all of the graffiti off of them the day before, with the exception of a few lingering fragments of text that were really only visible if examined from close up. The heavy rain had helped with some of that the night before. She checked them anyways and was thinking about whether or not it was worth it to attempt to get the last bit of spray paint off when something caught her eye.

Rin rose from her crouched position beside a stone rendition of Tsukiyomi and eyed the All Might statue. It was about a hundred feet away with a crumbling path winding around it. How long had she been here yesterday cleaning up graffiti? Six or seven hours? It had rained into the afternoon and had stormed on and off into the night. Somehow in that time the statue had acquired graffiti of its own. She was positive it hadn't been there the day before…she'd even been grudgingly lamenting the fact that it was the only large statue in the park that apparently had been spared.

She approached it and eyed the writing, clearly made with a different hand then the vandals who had written all over the park yesterday. It lacked the expletives, the crooked penmanship and the rushed look of something written by some delinquent kid. In fact, it was just one word, written in very neat kanji script; 'Death.'

She heard the crack of a branch and turned in time to see a figure…a man by the look of it disappearing around another statue. The only detail she'd been able to pick out was that he was apparently wearing a mask.

Rin felt an unpleasant tingle on the back of her neck. She frowned a little but couldn't think long about why something so odd would be written on a statue in the middle of the park or why a masked person would be walking on the paths because at that moment she began to hear panicked noises coming from the direction where most of the people were gathered.

"What the-" she started under her breath before cautiously heading towards the noise. This was, perhaps the opposite of what logic would suggest but it didn't occur to her to be overly concerned. While villain attacks were relatively common, this was Minato, Tokyo…All Might's Headquarters was in Minato. There was always someone stupid enough to attack anyways, but even disregarding those instances a small park on the edge of the city…there just wouldn't be much of a point.

Still, as she rounded the path and the more heavily wooded area gave way to the recreational portion of the park, it was clear that something was happening. She hung at the edge of the open stretch and watched bewilderedly as her mind tried to make sense of the situation, but a lot was going on at once.

Multiple people were the cause of the commotion, all using different quirks and trying to round everyone in the area together. There were some people on the ground, but it was difficult to tell if they were moving or not and some people were trying to run away.

"Ah, found a straggler," she heard behind her. She turned and raised the shears she was still holding in her hand, nearly stumbling and falling when the ground under her feet sucked her in up to her calves and held her in place. "Careful now."

The man behind her was sneering. He was wearing the sort of clothing that might be described as 'suspicious.' This included a lot of black and a long coat.

"Sorry miss, but we can't have anyone running off," he said as he eyed the brandished shears with amusement.

XXX

It didn't take long for cops to arrive at the park once the commotion started. A couple of the police officers that were already patrolling the area got caught up in the attack, but word was going to get out regardless. One of the attackers was watching the tree lines and pacing around the terrified group of park goers. Because of his quirk he could make people and objects heavier and was currently keeping as many of the hostages from moving as possible by increasing their weight. With multiple subjects, however it became more difficult and was giving him a hell of a headache. His real name was probably in a police database somewhere, but he went by Deadweight.

He glared towards another of the attackers, a smaller man who was wearing a plain black mask over his face. He had walked up to Deadweight casually five minutes after they had attacked and was now standing with his hands in his pockets. A handful of blank masks were hanging from his belt.

"I hope we can get out of here soon," Deadweight said to the man, while massaging his temples.

"Relax," came the reply, as the masked figure knelt beside a terrified looking woman. He detached one of the masks from his belt and pulled it carefully over her face.

"Relax? You know this is All Might's city right? I heard what happened to the guys who hit the station yesterday…I'd prefer to not get caught! Who the fuck is the guy arranging all of this anyways? Why did he send us here?"

"You won't be able to see him coming, so you might as well relax," the man replied, ignoring his question.

"What?" Deadweight said, while eyeing the woman curiously. She had stopped trembling and weeping and was instead sitting up and leaning on one hand as if she were just enjoying a casual day at the park.

"All Might, he moves too fast…you're not going to be able to see him coming no matter how hard you glare at those trees." The masked man said as he stood again.

"Shit, well that's just great." Deadweight replied clearly not feeling reassured by this bit of information.

The man turned towards him. His mask didn't even have facial features. It just had two holes for his eyes and presumably smaller holes somewhere further down, so he could breath.

"We've done well, you should feel proud."

"A little early to be saying that, you gotta win before you pat yourself on the back, all we've done is scare a few people." Deadweight said as he fished a cigarette out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth.

"The point isn't to win," the main replied as he looked up into the sky.

"The fuck is the point then?" Deadweight mumbled, the cigarette trembling in his lips while he searched his other pockets for a light.

"Duality…ah…earlier than I expected…oh well, it can't be helped, I suppose."

Deadweight opened his mouth to question this statement but froze as he heard a loud sound behind him. He turned in time to see All Might landing about a hundred feet away, the ground under his feet shaking with the impact. Deadweight turned back towards the masked man, possibly to curse or to shout something, but he was gone.

_Little shit must have run away the second he saw him, _he thought before turning back towards the towering hero and thinking very seriously about doing the same.

All Might rose, his smile showing brilliantly in the sunlight, which was also setting off the bright colors in his costume. Despite this, shadows still hung in his eyes, but that just meant it was impossible to see where he was looking.

"It's fine now. Why? Because I am here!" He said and that was the last thing Deadweight heard before he became…well…dead weight.

XXX

Rin had been trying to pry her feet from the ground as surreptitiously as possible as the…villain? Probably villain was an apt word was distracted by a few other 'stragglers' he had found and had half buried. He'd not bothered to take the sheers, presumably because he didn't see them or her as a threat. Plus, she was wearing her apron with her equipment in it and some heavy gardening gloves, which made it pretty obvious that she worked for the park. 80% of society might have quirks, but it stood to reason that anyone with a powerful quirk probably wouldn't work as a glorified gardener.

_Or maybe he's just an idiot, _she thought as she removed a large chunk of the earth surrounding her right leg with the shears before pulling it free. Getting the other leg free was much easier after this but also got the man's attention.

"Hey!" He started as he stepped towards her. She raised the massive blades, which were somewhat dulled by garden work, but were still over a foot of sharp rusted steal and started to rush him. Both froze at the commotion coming from the center of the park, however.

Rin had lived in Minato for a while now, but she'd never actually seen All Might in person. (well…not knowingly anyways) Both her and the villain watched as he landed, looking big even from this distance, heard him speak and then watched as he became a blur and the attackers fell one by one. It happened so fast that there wasn't any time to react, although the man in front her did change his expression briefly from bewilderment to fear. Then there was another blur and he was there, right there and the villain barely even managed to shout before he was knocked out cold. He had been so fast that Rin felt a rush of air as he appeared, sending her jacket flapping around her.

Witnessing All Might firsthand and seeing him on television or hearing about the things he could do or seeing a big dumb statue in her park every day were very different things. It wasn't that she hadn't ever thought about meeting him…although her reasons were probably very different from most people, but as he straightened and turned towards her she felt her mouth go dry and her chest tighten. She hadn't felt such complete cold terror in years. He was huge, with deep shadows on his face and, true to every image she'd ever seen of him, he was smiling. Like early that morning, she felt common sense attempting to override the sudden panic.

_Calm down, you're a citizen, an ordinary citizen, ACT like an ordinary citizen! _Ordinary citizens would probably be glad to see him, right?

"Careful with those!" All Might said in his booming, cheerful voice, clearly oblivious to the shouting going on inside her head. She winced and for a moment the meaning behind his statement didn't register.

_Giant Shears, maybe stop pointing the giant shears at him now…_

She dropped the hand holding the shears to her side and breathed in when it occurred to her that she hadn't been doing that. For a moment, he did seem to hesitate, as if he were trying to place something, but it was difficult to tell, as his expression didn't shift from that toothy smile.

"You work for the park; do you know the exits?" He said after a moment, making the connection that presumably any idiot could, given her dress. She forced herself to unfreeze and nodded. "Great! Go to nearest one. If you see any other civilians tell them to do the same. There might be more criminals in the area."

She felt the terror lessen a little as All Might turned towards the other captives who were able to pull themselves from the crumbling ground now that the man whose quirk had trapped them there was unconscious. They didn't look freaked out anymore. In fact, most of them were eyeing the big hero with awe and excitement. Gratefully, she took the opportunity to leave.

XXX

All Might had come as soon as he'd heard about the attack. It hadn't taken long; the park was very near his new apartment. Because of this, he was the first and only pro on the scene. Unlike the train station, a lot of the attackers were standing out in the open. His specialty was straightforward combat. They hadn't stood a chance.

When he'd taken out the last visible criminal, who had been nearer to the tree line holding a handful of people captive he paused to take stock of the situation. It had appeared as if one citizen, a young woman had been about to rush the man with a pair of enormous gardening shears, but he'd stepped in before that could transpire. It wasn't uncommon for citizens to fight back in these situations, but it could easily go very badly very quickly.

All Might had always put a lot of import on reassuring the people he rescued. Occasionally he could be naïve, something that perhaps sprouted from his unrelenting optimistic nature, but over the years he'd gotten very good at recognizing the various mental states of the people he saved and the best way to deal with them. Still, Rin's reaction was…off. He might attribute it to shock, except that she seemed less shocked by the situation in general and more by his appearance in it. Her expression had done the opposite of what he had come to expect in these sorts of situations. It went from a relative calm as she'd prepared to attack her assailant with garden shears to absolute terror at being rescued.

After their brief conversation…or, rather, after he'd spoken to her and she'd stood frozen in place responding with little but a nod, he'd looked away from her long enough to ensure that none of the other captives were injured. When he turned back, she was gone. During the whole exchange he had come to two conclusions; the first being that she was his upstairs neighbor, he'd only spoken to her briefly the day before, but it was still easy enough to recognize her. She had a youthful undercut that was pulled back into a messy bun, much like the day before and a substantial amount of metal in both ears. The second was that for some reason she was afraid of him. This was however, not something he could dwell on at that moment.

Two attacks, two random attacks in two days, both with multiple attackers in odd locations. A coincidence? All Might headed off to check the rest of the park, mostly from above, for any strange activity.

XXX

In truth, there wasn't really a nearest exit. They had been in the center of the park, so all of the exits were of equal distance. Rin headed back towards the statues, she'd left some of her cleaning supplies out here anyways. Once she got to the first large sculpture, half running and half walking in the process she stopped and placed her hand on it, wheezing slightly. She stuck the huge gardening shears in the dirt beside the statue and fished around in her jacket pocket for her inhaler but froze when she heard voices.

"-took him less than a minute, that guy's a monster."

"He's the number one hero for a reason."

Rin moved off of the path and ducked behind the statue, lowering herself to a crouch as the voices drew closer.

"Right, which makes this whole plan seem completely insane. I'm starting to feel like cannon fodder," the first voice was from a man. There was a touch of nervousness and frustration in it.

"Your only fodder if you get caught," the second voice came from a woman.

"Right, sure…all I have to do is outrun All Might. Easy."

As the two continued their conversation, oblivious to Rin's presence, she became aware of another noise, low and desperate. She scanned the area until her eyes settled on a set of smaller statues about twenty feet away and felt her heart shutter for a second as she met two panicked eyes, staring at her widely from a tiny white face. It was the girl in the polka dot dress, her flowers still clutched in her fingers and her bright bright colors doing a very poor job of camouflage against the dark forest and the gray statues. Rin put her finger to her lips and the girl seemed to at least acknowledge this, as her whimpering became slightly more muffled.

"Check this path and then meet me by the east exit," the woman said, now from very close by. The man muttered something in response.

_One, one is better then two. _Rin thought as she cast another look at the girl, whose eyes had left her and were now looking at nothing. The man was rounding the statue. There was no way, no way he wouldn't hear the child. She was whimpering too loudly; her clothing was too bright, and she was about two seconds away from panicking. Rin cursed the fact that she had left the shears on the other side of the statue she was hiding behind.

The man came into view. He was relatively large, no indication of his quirk, could be anything. He wasn't carrying a weapon, so that probably meant he didn't need one. Rin watched, with her lips pressed thin, breathing as slowly as she could through her nose, waiting. Then the man stopped and turned slightly towards the statues.

_Shit_.

"Who's there?" That was all it took for the child to completely lose whatever cool she had as her muffled whimpers became louder and more desperate. Rin watched as the man rounded the statues, his back turned towards her. His arms were at his sides and as he bared down on the child, his right arm began to shift, becoming longer and sharper. So, some kind of body manipulation…he could turn his hands into weapons.

With his unchanged hand he grabbed the child's wrist and she began to scream. Rin cursed, this time out loud and leapt towards the man, colliding into his back as hard as she could with her elbow. He was big enough so that, while it probably did still hurt, it didn't disable him at all. Still, it did at least catch him off guard, causing him to forget the child for a moment as he loosed his grasp on her and spun around, swinging with his weaponized hand. It collided with Rin's side, causing her to grit her teeth against the blow.

"You just made a huge mistake!" the man said as he grabbed her neck and pulled her from her place hunched over from the blow, brandishing his weaponized hand again. Rin's mind had gone blank ever since she'd jumped at the man, her thoughts replaced by short succinct instructions, while everything else was drowned out by a feeling of numbness. She raised her hand slowly, as if to grab at the hand he had around her neck, but instead covered both her mouth and nose, holding her breath.

She watched as the man's expression changed to confusion and then shock. Rin felt his grip on her neck loosen and then fall away and resisted the urge to breath when the pressure was gone. His weaponized hand was also receding, turning back to normal and he was grasping at his own throat desperately as he stumbled backwards, making strange noises.

Rin could still remember the feeling, it wasn't like trying to catch your breath, it wasn't even like her episodes of panic early in the morning…it was more like drowning. The absolute cessation of oxygen while the lungs strained to fill themselves with something that wasn't there.

The man fell to his hands and knees, the color draining from his face, his whole-body trembling with the effort to take a breath. She was aware of a small treacherous voice cutting through the numb, the calm.

_It would be so easy, like blowing out a candle. _She uncovered her mouth and nose and breathed in. On the ground, the man began to cough, as suddenly he had enough oxygen so that retching became possible. Before he could recover more then that Rin put all of her weight into a heavy kick to his face, hearing a cracking noise against her hiking boot as the man's nose broke. He rolled over unconscious.

Rin's own breathing was coming out in a hum again. She pulled her inhaler out of her jacket pocket and breathed in before turning her attention back on the girl, who was still whimpering.

"Come on," Rin said, her voice coming out as a croak. "Exit…over here," she added as she stumbled around to the path, yanking the gardening shears out of the dirt in the process.


	3. Late Night Texts

Chapter 3:

Late Night Texts and Early Morning Phone Calls

The night after the attack on the park, Rin once again woke up at 3am gasping for breath. She fumbled at her side table in the dark only to realize that she'd left her inhaler in her apron pocket, which was currently hanging on a chair in her kitchen. Shaking, and feeling an immense amount of pressure in her back and chest, she stumbled out of bed and lurched her way to the other room. By the time she reached into the pockets and found her inhaler, her head was pounding.

After she used it, she lowered herself in the chair and closed her eyes, letting some of the pain in her head dissipate and feeling the tightness in her midsection slowly disperse. After her heart was no longer pounding in her temples, she opened her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. She set the inhaler down on the table and stared at the front window, which was showing nothing but blackness and a faint glow from outside.

After a couple more minutes like this, she headed into the kitchen. Once again, she eyed the contents of her fridge and underwent a brief internal struggle as she stared at the remaining cans of beer sitting next to left over mochi and a bottle of lemon soda. She pursed her lips and grabbed one of them.

_Sorry Kaiya, _she thought to herself as she popped the tab. _Tea is NOT going to cut it this time._

A few minutes later she was outside in the cold autumn air sitting about halfway down the stairs leading down to the ground floor and swallowing enough of the beer at once so that it was about halfway gone when she lowered it and set it on the stair beside her.

When was the last time she'd used her quirk? Like really used it? It had to have been months ago, even longer since she'd used it on a person. She could probably count on one hand the amount of times she'd used her power as an adult.

_You didn't have a choice, _a small part of her brain offered. _He was too strong, he had his hand around your neck…you'd have been in real trouble if you hadn't. _She shivered briefly, partly because of the crisp autumn air and partly because she was remembering the feeling of having the man's life at her fingertips. He had been a hundred pounds heavier than her at least, but it had still been so easy…and it would have been easy to keep going just a little further. Rin dug her fingernails into the side of her arm to stop the line of thinking. It would just become a vicious cycle…the same as it always did when she used her power, all it would lead to was more drinking.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw headlights. She winced back from the light as a cab pulled into the parking lot in front of her apartment. The parking lot itself was not especially well lit, but there was one light on each building that offered a faint glow in the dark as a figure emerged from it.

The tall gaunt shape and flash of messy yellow hair were distinctive as her neighbor walked towards the building. He was wearing a large long jacket that fit his body just as poorly as his clothes from the other day had. He didn't notice her at first, as he was looking downward with a fixed expression. The light from building cast harsh shadows on his face, obscuring large patches of it, although it was still evident that he was exhausted.

Rin had spent a large majority of her life trying to avoid attention and she realized that she wasn't moving, hoping that if she didn't make any noise he would just completely fail to notice her. She didn't want to deal with the strain of having to communicate with another person right now. It had been a long day and she wasn't sure she could muster enough strength to not be an asshole.

Despite her intense focus on remaining completely still and willing herself invisible, he looked up and started a little. It was understandable. He probably hadn't expected to run into anyone at 3am either.

"Oh, sorry…" he said. Rin wondered briefly why he was apologizing to _her_ for startling _him_. She was, after all the odd one out here. There were logical reasons why someone would come home at 3am…there weren't too many logical reasons why someone would sit in the dark and drink by themselves at 3am. What's more, she didn't know how to respond to it. Granted, this was nothing new for her, but in this case, there was just no reply that made sense to her…which meant that the only option available was to just sit there…staring at him…in the dark…and since her expression defaulted to a frown she was most likely scowling.

Naturally, this made the situation twice as uncomfortable. He shifted awkwardly, clearly feeling it too. For a moment it looked as if he were just going to head towards his apartment, but he paused and turned back towards her, opening his mouth to say something else. Instead of speaking he started coughing. There was probably no such thing as a healthy cough, but this was decidedly unhealthy, the kind of cough that made one twitch and cringe. He was doubled over and hacking into his hand violently.

Rin was in a strange enough frame of mind that for one horrified second, she had to double check and make sure she wasn't using her quirk without realizing it. She'd even stood up in a panic and knocked what was left of her beer over. Distantly, she heard hissing and dripping as the orion draft spilled over the steps and onto the ground under the stairs. After a moment her panic subsided a bit…even though her breath had caught in her throat in response to the sudden alarm, she definitely wasn't using her power.

XXX

Toshinori had spent much of the afternoon going over the details of the attack on the park with the local police. After he finally wrapped that up he had had about an hour…maybe a bit longer to rest before he had to run out again after seeing news about a small earthquake about an hour outside of the city that had hit a small town. All of this meant he had spent far more time in his hero form then he probably should have. Granted, he hadn't been doing hero work for some of that time. Nevertheless, it was still tiring, like keeping all of his muscles flexed for hours and the longer he was in the form, the more his side hurt. By the time he had finished helping with the rescue efforts he'd used all of his time up, which had meant a hasty retreat, dodging the press in the process and ultimately having to call a cab to take him back.

Regardless of this discomfort, and despite his desire to get inside his apartment, take a long bath and get the sleep that he'd failed to get the previous night was put on hold when he saw his neighbor. One of the reasons he was the number one hero was his habit of putting other people's needs above his own. Of course, people who knew him well would probably say this could be both his best and worst quality.

So, unlike other people, who might have completely ignored another person drinking in the dark at 3am by themselves…indeed would probably go out of their way to ignore it, Toshinori felt slightly compelled to say something. After his initial apology, which was another troublesome habit of his, he meant to inquire as to whether she was all right, while being aware that he, in this form, would have to do so without letting on that he knew she'd been in the park earlier that day. Unfortunately, because of the pain in his side and inhaling the crisp autumn air to pose the question he went into a coughing fit.

He was aware, with frustration that this most likely had the opposite effect of what he had wanted. It could be argued that asking a stranger how they were doing at 3am was, in a way, disturbing their peace…but suddenly coughing violently in front of them definitely was. This was evident by the alarmed expression on her face and the fact that she had shot up, spilled her drink and her expression had gone from blank and perhaps slightly annoyed to all out panic.

Toshinori fought to catch his breath long enough to stifle his coughing, while peering through his long blonde bangs at Rin who had shifted on the stair and had opened her mouth, clearly unsure of what to do in the situation. He raised one hand and straightened a little.

"I'm all r-" he started before blood spurt out of his lips and Rin's look of alarm turned to complete horror.

At this point Toshinori more or less cut his losses. There was probably no saving this situation. Well-meaning intentions could only get you so far. He was just going to try to not cough up any more blood and get out of her hair before making her night any worse.

"Shit," he said through his teeth as he covered his mouth with his sleeve and started back towards his apartment, making a halfhearted attempt to bow out of courtesy. "Sorry…goodnight," he added awkwardly.

He fumbled at his pockets for his keys, while absently gritting his teeth to prevent any more blood from falling out of his mouth. When he got inside he sighed and wiped the lingering blood off of his chin without thinking and then made a vague sound of frustration at the fact that his jacket sleeve was now stained with it.

_Great, All Might, _he thought to himself as he pulled off the long jacket and draped it across a chair, before heading towards the bathroom. _With this body, you're not even able to put one citizen at ease._

XXX

For Rin, it had seemed like the proverbial cherry on top of an already bizarre, horrible, frustrating day. The whole encounter had gone from troublesome, to alarming, to bizarre and terrifying in a matter of seconds…and then had concluded more awkwardly then even she was accustomed to.

Once he had left, it occurred to her that a good neighbor would probably try to check and make sure he was okay. Not that Rin had ever particularly strived to be a good neighbor. Mostly she just tried to avoid any contact with people at all, positive or negative. Still, healthy people didn't generally cough up blood…maybe he needed help? He was walking okay and had even apologized to her a second time before leaving so he could probably call his own ambulance if he had to, right? This was probably Kaiya's influence, that vague prodding sensation to be a 'good person,' which was then inevitable followed by an even more persistent worry that she was not a 'good person,' which was inevitably followed by a headache.

Rin ignored both voices and grabbed at her now empty beer can, deciding that instead of thinking or worrying about the things she was thinking, she was going to have another beer…maybe more…maybe all of them.

XXX

Fifteen minutes later, Toshinori was sitting in the tub as it filled with hot water and was staring at the white walls of his bathroom. He was over 200 centimeters tall in both forms, which made it very difficult to fit in an average sized bathtub, let alone the compact sized tub that had come with his new apartment. Because of this, his long legs were folded up, with his feet resting on the opposite wall. It wasn't the most comfortable of positions, but the hot water still felt good on his side and aching limbs.

His brief and unfortunate interaction with his neighbor outside reminded him of something else that he hadn't had time to think about while he had been busy. Her reaction to him in front of the apartment had been perfectly understandable…eventually he would have to apologize…again…preferably when he wasn't retching blood. Her reaction to him earlier as All Might, however, came back to him as he stared at the ceiling. Now he had time to wonder about it.

It wasn't that he hadn't seen that expression before, it was just that it was generally on the face of someone on the other side of his fist and even then, the fear in her eyes had been almost hysterical, like she was looking at some monster out of a tale. It made him uncomfortable. Fear was not what he wanted to inspire. Of course, to a degree he did want to inspire fear in criminals, but even then, it had never been what he'd built up All Might to be.

Toshinori took a minute to turn off the water and then sank as far as he could into the warmth. This probably wasn't the right thing to be worried about right now. After a full examination of both the park and Shinagawa train station there was no doubt that both were connected. The lynchpin were the masks. Thankfully, there had been no casualties this time, but there had been civilians wearing the same blank masks with kanji script on them. This time, they had all read; 'death.'

While the civilians were still alive, they did seem confused and more then one of them seemed to have some sort of negative physical or mental response to the attack. One of the civilians who had been wearing a mask, for instance started having nosebleeds about halfway through answering some questions, while another with preexisting problems with blood pressure had been rushed to the hospital because he was having chest pains. This was not especially odd, given the circumstances, possibly just a stress response…but still…

Toshinori was not stupid, but analytical thinking was not really his strength. He pulled himself partway out of the tub and reached for his phone, which was balancing on the edge of the sink. After grabbing it, he sank back into the water and began searching through his contacts. He'd had a long career as a pro hero and being a symbol in the spotlight for so long meant that he had met many people on the police force and outside of it. This also inevitably meant that very few of them could be considered close friends. All Might had to be invulnerable…had to have an impenetrable image, and this was especially important and especially difficult to maintain now that he was in such poor health. Still, he was lucky enough to have a few close friends. He stopped when he got to Naomasa Tsukauchi's name.

Toshinori paused in the act of hitting the phone icon and eyed the time briefly, it was 4am…most people would be asleep…calling now would be rude. He left a quick text instead:

**Tsukauchi,**

**Call me if you get a chance?****  
****It's about the attacks on Shinigawa and Ikigai.**

**-All Might**

XXX

Rin woke up with a groan the next morning to the sound of her phone ringing. She swatted briefly at her alarm clock in her initial fog before she realized that the sound was coming from under the jacket she'd shed the night before. She half fell out of bed as she retrieved the phone and eyed it briefly before answering.

"Kaiya?" She mumbled, while balancing on one elbow on the floor and pulling her feet from the covers.

"Good morning," she heard from the other side. There was some amusement in her voice, but also a tinge of something like admonishment, as if she were in for a lecture. Kaiya was an elementary school teacher so this probably came naturally to her.

"Why are you calling so early?" Rin asked as she got to her feet, wincing slightly at how heavy her head felt.

"Well, first of all it's 11:00…judging by the complete nonsense you texted me earlier this morning, I'm guessing you were distracted and forgot that we agreed to have lunch last week. I'm outside."

Rin frowned as she eyed the time.

"R-right, sorry…give me a minute."

"I'd bring sunglasses, Murasaki…the sun is shining nice and bright today," Kaiya added, with a touch of smugness.

"Ha ha, fuck you," Rin said before hanging up.

XXX

Toshinori had managed to get a few hours of sleep before he too was awakened by his phone. In his case it had been earlier in the morning when his admittedly obnoxious ringtone went off.

_A phone call is here! A phone call is here! A phone-_

He grabbed the phone and answered the call before it could go any further, musing briefly that his own cheerful voice could be a touch irritating in the early morning.

"Hey, Tsukauchi, sorry for the early morning text," he said as he rubbed at his sunken eyes.

"No need to apologize, did I wake you?" Naomasa replied, adding the last with a bit of concern.

"No, no I'm fine, I needed to get up anyways," Toshinori said as he swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"I spent the last hour going over the details of the two attacks. Those people were lucky you were there. I saw the news, but I see some of the information was left out."

"Yeah well…I'm not surprised. Serialized attacks aren't exactly common these days," Toshinori replied as he headed to the kitchen with a yawn.

"I think the police are hoping they caught whoever was behind the attacks yesterday in the park, but I'm guessing you think otherwise."

"Yeah, the attack yesterday was sloppy…too public, but I can't shake this uneasy feeling…" Toshinori rubbed the back of his neck, ruffling his already messy blonde hair.

"I agree…" Naomasa said after a brief pause. "If you like I could talk to my chief and see if he'll let me take this case. I'm sure he'll agree, especially if I have All Might's endorsement," he added the last with some amusement.

"You have it, my friend. Thank you Tsukauchi, I feel better knowing your looking into things."

After ending the phone call and eating a small pathetic breakfast, forgoing even the miso soup for a simple bowl of rice, Toshinori pulled on an over-sized button up shirt and headed into the bright sunlight.

A woman was leaning against the stairway leading up to the second story of the apartment building. She had her arms crossed and was eyeing the top of the stairs. When Toshinori emerged from his apartment the woman's eyes shifted to him and her expression went carefully blank. He was starting to get used this kind of reaction from strangers when he was in this form. There were some people of course who were far less subtle about it, but this was a common example of someone trying to be considerate by not reacting because he was clearly an emaciated skeleton man. Despite this he smiled brightly.

"Good morning," he said, and it said something for the woman's sense of compassion that the blank look was replaced by a smile that at least appeared genuine.

XXX

Rin pulled on a jacket, quickly stuffing some hard candy in the pockets. She did indeed grab a pair of cheap sunglasses she had in a junk drawer in her kitchen and put them on before heading to her front door. She could try to prove Kaiya wrong by not wearing them, but there really wasn't much of a point. She'd just wind up squinting in the sunlight, her headache would get worse and Kaiya would just look at her with that expression she wore, not quite disappointment or anger…just vague concerned exasperation.

Rin faltered about halfway down the stairs when she noted that her downstairs neighbor was outside talking to Kaiya, then resumed her pace when they both noticed her.

"Great, you're up, I was beginning to think I'd be going to lunch alone," Kaiya said, a hint of teasing in her voice. Rin returned it with a touch of a smile that was little more then a twitch of her lips. Her eyes flickered to her neighbor warily.

"Ah, Miss Hajime," he said, looking embarrassed. "I wanted to apologize for last night."

"Oh…right…er…it's fine…it wasn't…it's fine…I mean…you did apologize…a lot…already," she mumbled, while cursing her inability to people on command.

"Right, sorry, a bad habit of mine," he said before frowning slightly, most likely at the realization that he had just apologized for apologizing. "Uh, still…I didn't mean to disrupt your evening."

"You er…" Rin paused for a second while she tried to assess how best it would be to inquire on what could be a sensitive topic. "You…you're, I mean that happens to you a lot, does it?" No…no that was definitely not the best way, which was painfully clear by the fact that he didn't even seem to be completely sure as to what she was referring at first. When it finally did click he smiled. Despite his gaunt face and shadowed eyes, the man had a good smile. It was simple and genuine.

"Uh yes, it happens sometimes…I know it can be unpleasant…but it isn't…it's nothing new for me."

A brief silence fell over the conversation. Rin hated uncomfortable silences almost as much as she hated small talk. There was always an unstated obligation to fill it with something. She noticed that Kaiya had been eyeing her patiently during their exchange and still was, before giving up on whatever she was trying to subtly suggest with her expression. Kaiya had known her long enough to know when she was going to pick up on social cues and when she wasn't.

"Sorry, I didn't catch your name," Kaiya said cheerfully, breaking the silence.

"Ah, Toshinori Yagi, nice to meet you," he said as he held out his hand. Kaiya took it. As she did, Rin watched her face closely for a moment before smiling a bit to herself. She had known Kaiya for a long time as well. Anyone else probably wouldn't have noticed the subtle flicker in her expression.

"Kaiya Maki, I never get to meet Rin's neighbors," she said with a smile. "Did you just move in?"

"A couple days ago," he replied while absently running a hand through his hair.

"Do you like it so far?"

"Yes, it's quiet…out of the way."

"That is…one way to put it," Rin mumbled. She caught Toshinori's eye and looked away awkwardly as he directed another gentle smile at her.

"A little less quiet after yesterday, I imagine," Kaiya said while crossing her arms, a light shadow falling over her face. Rin knew her friend would most likely bring this subject up with her later and she would have to spend some time convincing her that she was fine…late-night drunk texts aside.

"Right, the attack on the park," her neighbor said, his own smile faltering a little. His voice took on a slightly strange quality, as if he were choosing his words carefully. Rin also noticed that his attention seemed to be on her again, making her slightly uncomfortable. "It seems like an odd place for it…at least no one got seriously hurt."

"Really? I heard some people were in critical condition at the hospital," Kaiya said. Toshinori shook his head.

"Mostly it was just for observation, hostage situations can be traumatizing and have very serious after-effects." A statement like this, Rin thought, added somewhat to his overall strangeness. It was direct and confident, almost authoritative. It didn't fit with his messy hair and his baggy clothes.

"You sound like you have some experience," Kaiya said, clearly also picking up on this, but probably without thinking as judgmental thoughts as she was. The man smiled again, but this time it sat less comfortably on his face.

"Oh, ah uh," he started with some embarrassment as he started to go through the pockets of his oversized slacks. After a moment, he pulled a card from them and handed it to Kaiya. "I didn't think about how much of that was mentioned in the news. I'm actually All Might's Secretary Manager, so I see a lot of messages and paperwork on the incidents he's involved in."

Kaiya eyed the card and looked sideways at her with a slightly anxious expression. She was also aware that Mr. Yagi, _All Might's secretary _her brain added, _who sees paperwork on the incidents he's involved in, _was also watching her with slight curiosity. How would someone respond to this in a completely normal casual way that in no way betrayed the fact that she was hearing a strange rushing sound in her ears.

_Run away? _Her brain offered. She dismissed this as unhelpful.

"All Might, you work for All Might…" she heard herself say in almost accusatory tones. "You don't look like you work for All Might." He shifted with some discomfort and Rin wondered vaguely what sort of expression she was currently wearing. It was true though, he didn't look like he worked for All Might…why would he live in Ikigai if he worked for the Number One Hero…why did he live in the apartment below her? Why was he watching her so carefully right now!?

"I guess that's true," He said while rubbing the back of his neck with some embarrassment. Rin felt a twinge of guilt as she thought over how insulting this probably sounded to someone who might actually _like_ All Might.

"No I mean, I didn't mean that as an insult, it's good, it's a good thing…"

"Wow, it must be a really interesting job," Kaiya interrupted, rescuing her from embarrassing herself and him any further. "And demanding, I imagine All Might gets a lot of paperwork."

"He does," Toshinori said, finally shifting his gaze away from her. "Lots and lots of paperwork." The last he added in a bit of a grumble. Kaiya smiled.

"It's getting a little late, it was nice meeting you Mr. Yagi, but we really should head out before all of the good tables are taken." Kaiya said before motioning for Rin to head towards the street.

XXX

A few minutes later her and Kaiya were walking in silence.

"So…"

"I know," Rin interrupted. "Not very subtle."

"I wasn't going to say that," Kaiya said before giving her a light smile. "It's not against the law to dislike All Might…although I imagine most of Tokyo would disagree."

"Most of Japan would disagree," Rin mumbled.

"You were there yesterday…you saw him?"

"Yep, did you want to know if his hair stays in that stupid position even while taking down dangerous criminals?"

"Mmm, you're always mean when you're worried about something."

"You know I hate it when you analyze me. It does by the way, it does stay in that stupid position." They were quiet again for a few moments.

"You know you have nothing to worry about, right? All Might doesn't know who you are…his secretary doesn't know who you are and even if he did, you haven't done anything wrong. Having your father's power doesn't make you him." Rin winced a little.

"I know that," she said. Kaiya was good at getting to the heart of the matter in a way that could be frustrating sometimes, but then she was specially equipped for it.

"Speaking of All Might's secretary," Rin said, changing the subject in a way that she knew would throw her friend off balance a little. "What's your read on him?"

"He seemed very nice," Kaiya said.

"Yeah…so is he? Nice?" With some satisfaction she saw Kaiya's expression flicker a little. "I know you used your quirk on him."

"You can't know that…you're guessing," her friend said, her voice now slightly defensive.

"Nope, you have a tell," Rin said while fishing a hard candy out of her jacket pocket and popping it in her mouth.

"What tell? I don't have a tell."

"You do, you always look guilty when your using your quirk on someone you don't know very well," Rin said, her voice slightly muffled by the guava flavored candy. "So is he as weirdly nice as he seems."

"Yes," Kaiya said, relenting. "His kindness was not in fact a sinister ploy and believe it or not some people are naturally friendly and that doesn't make them weird."

"Yeah but most people aren't. Don't lie, you read him because he seemed weird."

"He stands out," her friend conceded. "But for the most part he felt completely normal."

"'Completely normal' is weird."

"You know what I mean; anxious, uncomfortable, curious…all pretty standard human emotions. He did seem…I dunno how to put it…alert? On guard?"

"Hmm," Rin said while eyeing the road for a second.

"And sad," Kaiya said after a second, as if trying to untangle the knots that made up the human experience. "He seemed sad."


	4. Talking Like Normal People

Author's Note: After I update this chapter I'm just going to post everything I have on the story so far. Originally I was going to spread it out a bit just so the stats would be a bit better, given that lower stats put off readers (myself included) but I decided...weh. Ao3 is still the main site I'm going to post this to because traffic is a little better and I enjoy being able to edit easily and post illustrations, but I'll update here as well. The only thing that might be different is that these chapters might wind up being a bit rough for longer because it's kind of a pain to edit stuff on this site and I have a tendency to make tweaks to my stories as I go along.

I would also still be grateful for your favorites and reviews. It won't affect my desire to continue the story, but it is a great motivator :3

Also, thanks to the one person who left a review so far! Normally I'd respond via the pm system, but since it was a guest I'll just say that I appreciate you here :)

Chapter Four:

Talking Like Normal People

Like any city, Minato, Tokyo had it's share of rundown properties. It was an inevitability of modern society. There were always those streets and neighborhoods that were left to age and eventually decay, giving way to more and more buildings with broken or boarded up windows, houses that slowly fell apart, streets that cracked and crumbled and empty storefronts with increasingly desperate for sale signs. Every once in a while some city official will push to 'clean up' these sections in a city, and sometimes there's even some success, but often it's easier to just ignore them and move on, allowing them to slowly fester like a fruit sitting on a windowsill and rotting from the inside. One such building was sitting in the middle of what may have once been a bustling retail district, but now contained very little but a drug store, bar, adult literature store and one restaurant that always smelled like disinfectant.

A young man, looking to be in his late teens eyed a slip of paper wearily and looked around the empty street. There was no one around, but in Minato, it was good to be discreet if you were up to no good. Contrary to popular belief, it was not impossible to be a villain in a city with All Might in it…there was some leeway, but it mostly came down to the fact that no one believed that anyone in their right minds would aspire to crime in such a place.

The young man had a name but had long since shed it for a code name…well…to be honest he had shed it for several as he frequently changed it. He was currently going by Seethe.

He tried the door and found it opened with a creak and stepped into the darkness of a place that smelled of wet mildew. It had once been an office building and had had rather sleek architecture. Now it was dark, with some windows broken and boarded up, pealing carpet and wallpaper and a thick atmosphere of dust and mold. A lot of the furniture was still present, which was curious as it raised questions as to why someone would just leave a whole building of office furniture to rot…but perhaps it had been easier then hauling it off…or perhaps whatever business had occupied the building had shut down and leaving the furniture had been cheaper than trying to do something with it.

He followed the instructions up the stairs until he heard voices. Judging by some scattered and worn bits of cloth and clothing it was clear that sometimes homeless people wandered into the building, at least during the colder months when it was preferable to wake up congested from breathing the stale air rather than to freeze outside, but right now only five other people were present. They were on one of the upper floors, in a space that had probably once been for staff meetings. There were chairs, but only two of the five were using them. The other three presumably not wishing to touch anything in the fetid room.

"There wasn't a better place to meet?" One of the men who were standing was saying as Seethe stepped into the room. The man was wearing a suit and an irritated expression. The suit was clearly expensive and looked quite out of place in the fetid environment.

"It's discreet," Another figure said from a seat. He was wearing a black mask. He seemed comfortable in the chair, despite his surroundings.

"There are discreet places that are a bit more…pleasant though," a woman said, also standing. She was eyeing a window, perhaps debating on whether or not it would open. She was wearing gloves, but otherwise was dressed neatly and casually. "I can feel my sinuses closing up."

The other two people in the room were a girl; who was currently eyeing the wallpaper with a faint smile and an older man, most likely in his late thirties with grey in his hair and a pair of thin glasses. They'd barely acknowledged him when he entered.

"Yes, but the street is empty at this time of day and arranging to meet somewhere more comfortable would have taken time. I notice Dagger isn't here," the man with the mask added as an afterthought.

The gloved woman, who had been testing the boards on the window to see how firmly they were in place, sighed and crossed her arms.

"We were heading to the exit together, but we split up. I guess he got caught."

"All right, fine, enough small talk, let's just get this over so I can go home and take a long shower," the man in the suit said. "When I 'agreed' to do this, I was under the impression that I was going to get out of it clean."

"You did get out clean…" the man with the mask said blankly. "Otherwise you wouldn't have joined us today."

"Because I chose to leave before things went to hell!"

"Because you weren't stupid. Well done, Kawaguchi Ryo." The man called Ryo winced a little.

"No names, please!"

"Mr. Kawaguchi brings up a good point though," The woman said. "I don't know why the rest of you are here, but I'm here because someone knows stuff about me and I would prefer it not spread. It's hard enough being a criminal in this city without being blackmailed, but I'm sure as hell not going to take another chance like that park fiasco. Kind of defeats the purpose of blackmail if your asked to basically stand out in the open and wait for All Might to catch you…"

"I wasn't blackmailed," the older man in the glasses said while raising his eyebrow.

"Kawaguchi…" Seethe said out loud, mostly to himself. Nevertheless he gained the attention of most of the people in the room, apart from the girl sitting at the table with the masked man, who was just humming to herself happily and the other woman who was prodding at a different window. "Like…Kawaguchi Energy? Your company provides power for half of the city."

It was clear by the man's expression that this revelation was not appreciated and was also probably correct. Instead of answering he stepped toward the table angrily.

"Where's the bastard who sent us these?" Ryo said while waving a piece of paper. "I'm done messing around, I did his little errand, now I want to know he'll keep his mouth shut."

The man in the mask sat back a little. He didn't look like much; average height, average weight, he was wearing dark colors but not in a stylish way. It was an assortment of nearly mismatched hues, all faded.

"Sorry, using your personal information against you was the only way I could get some of you to come. Rest assured, I won't be going to the police or the heroes and telling them how you make your money Mr. Kawaguchi, but I do ask that you hear me out."

The man glowered.

"You, you tried to blackmail me? _Me? _Who the fuck do you think you are? I employ men who could snap your neck like a twig. I don't know where you got your information, but I'm not going to waste any more time with some nobody trying to play like he's a bigshot villain," he threw the piece of paper down on the table and started towards the door. Then he stopped. Seethe, who was still standing near the exit was in a position to see the man's expression as it changed from rage to confusion.

"What the," the man said as he tried to move but stood in place.

The man in the mask stood up with a sigh.

"I thought I was being pretty reasonable. All I asked was for you to hear me out."

"What is this!?" Ryo said, his face turning red as his hands and legs began to tremble with the effort of trying to budge them.

"I've got to hand it to you, you're stronger willed then I would have guessed. You know about 70% of the people I use my quirk on can't even think straight after I've activated it," the man in the mask said while brushing a bit of dust from Ryo's jacket as the man struggled against the invisible force. "It won't matter though, I've met a few people who were immune to this power, but you are clearly not and in a few more minutes you won't be able to talk. In about twenty I'll be able to twist your body to do whatever I want it to and then maybe I'll get a couple hours of use out of it…depends on how healthy you are. Sadly, my power takes it toll…it's very hard to manage individual organs…and I've never been able to make anyone last much longer then that."

Now everyone in the room was paying attention and Ryo's anger had slowly drained from his face and was being replaced by fear.

"Now, how about we all sit," he said as he placed a hand on Mr. Kawaguchi's shoulder. "And have a chat."

XXX

Rin had just got out of the shower and was in the process of tying up her hair when she heard a knock on her door. She frowned. It was early in the morning and the only visitor she ever got was Kaiya, who always texted or called beforehand.

She crossed the room, grabbing a couple different types of hard candy as she passed her kitchen counter and unwrapping one in the process. She opened the door and the piece of candy froze halfway to her mouth as she eyed the policeman in her doorway.

"Miss Hajime," he said.

Aware that she was standing with her mouth open with a piece of candy clutched in her fingers, she unfroze and finished the act of popping it in her mouth, while feeling a distinctive and familiar sinking feeling.

"You are Miss Hajime?" The policeman added.

"Yeah," she said in even tones, her face blank, as she moved the candy around with her tongue.

"You're the groundskeeper at Shizuka Park?" The police officer said while pulling out a notebook. "Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions?"

"I was just heading to work," she said. "Is it important?"

"I would say an attack on a civilian park is important, Miss Hajime," he added and there was something else seeping into his expression, slightly overriding his professional demeanor. Suspicion? Fear? Anger? Sometimes she wished she could read people the way Kaiya did…other times she was glad she couldn't.

Rin sighed, grabbed the jacket hanging by her door and pulled it on as she stepped out into the autumn sunshine. Perhaps it would have been polite to invite him in, but it had been three days since the attack on the park. During that time, it had been closed off so that police could investigate, which meant she was behind on her work. This conversation would most likely make her late. She didn't feel like being polite. Add to this the fact that she had never had a good experience with a policeman.

"Well?" She said, allowing a smidgen of frustration enter her voice.

"You were there on Monday?"

"Yeah."

"What were you doing before the attack?"

"Working. I'm the park Groundskeeper. You did just point that out. Monday was Keirō no Hi," she crossed her arms and gave the policeman a look. When he met her gaze her suspicion from before was confirmed. He knew who she was. She was probably still on a watch list somewhere. Of course, someone would come to check up on her. The police would have her info, the attack was on a random park that she worked at, and Minato, Tokyo was not accustomed to villain attacks, they'd probably be checking up on anyone even vaguely suspicious…it didn't mean she had to be nice about it.

"Did you see the attack happen?"

"Would have been pretty difficult not to." Rin had a couple of different modes and those were; trying to be a normal average healthy person and herself. When she wasn't making the effort to 'be normal' she was, she knew, not very good at talking to people. At best she came off as awkward or rude, at worst she came off as maladjusted. She'd gotten better at 'normal' the older she got and having a friend like Kaiya with her seemingly infinite reserves of patience had helped, but it still seeped through sometimes. Currently she _was_ making a small effort, but she didn't feel like expending the energy for pleasant. Pleasant sometimes took a lot of energy.

"There's no need for hostility Ms. Hajime, it was a simple question," he said crisply.

"Yes, I was attacked by a man who had an earth quirk. I saw it," she said, while resisting to urge to point out that 'hostile' was not a fair descriptor for what she was being…contemptuous, perhaps…but hostile? It wasn't as if she was taking a swing at him. "I already filled out a form for my boss about this and he said a copy was being sent to the police. So, unless you have a good reason to keep me here, or are planning on arresting me for something, I'll be heading to work now."

"Can't be too careful, miss," the policeman said, although he seemed to be ever so slightly off balance now.

"Right, good work," she mumbled and pushed past him. She heard him inhale like he was going to say something else and then stop. Right, a single policeman following up on a large-scale attack? There was clearly nothing to it. Pro heroes would handle anyone known to be directly involved with the attack…at the very least he would have come with backup if they'd had even a scrap of evidence against her. So this was just…what…a friendly reminder that they knew that she was here?

Rin moved the candy around her mouth again. It was ginger and for a moment she focused on the vague burning on her tongue for whatever comfort it gave as she tried to ignore the ball of anger and frustration sitting heavily in her stomach.

XXX

Toshinori set a tray with two tea cups and a kyusu on his coffee table to allow the green tea inside to steep. In the meantime, he sat down on the couch next to Naomasa, who was looking through police reports on the attacks that had occurred earlier in the week.

Naomasa had called earlier in the morning to ask if they could meet and discuss the incidents. He had been going over all of the information for the past couple of days after getting permission to investigate.

"A lot of the people involved in these attacks were low grade criminals…" Naomasa said as he flipped though witness accounts and stopped on a photograph of one of the deceased conductors. "A few talked…but none of them seemed to know who they were working for."

"So someone was using them," Toshinori said as he rested his arms on his knees with a sigh.

"Someone with a flair for the dramatic," Naomasa smiled humorlessly as he tapped the photo. "Life and death."

"Right…it's always worrying when villains leave a calling card."

"The theatrics definitely point to some level of fanaticism. I'm more worried that there didn't seem to be a discernible reason for either attack. If the organizer behind this was just using these criminals, then either he had a goal and wasn't able to accomplish it…or he did accomplish it and it's just unclear what _it _is right now."

"Unpleasant to think that someone would hurt people just to make a point," Toshinori said while touching his long fingertips together. After a moment of pensive silence, he grabbed at the stoneware teapot and lifted the lid as if to check the contents before pouring a little into each cup and offering one to Naomasa.

"Thank you," the detective said as he set the papers down and took it. Toshinori picked up his own cup and took a sip. Tea was one thing he could still enjoy despite his intestinal problems…mostly…provided it didn't have a lot of added sugar or dairy and he didn't drink it at the same time he was eating. That last part was the most frustrating. Technically his diet demanded that he barely have anything to drink while he was eating. It was hard to enjoy the prospect of meals when a written schedule was needed to carefully plan out when he should be allowed to have a cup of tea…not that he was good about following it anyways.

"Did you see this," Naomasa said, interrupting his thoughts, as he fished one of the photographs from under the stack and slid it towards the older man. The photograph showed a statue of All Might. Toshinori set his cup down and picked it up. He could see a dark bit of graffiti written across it.

"I think you should start considering that whoever this is might be trying to get _your_ attention."

Toshinori sighed. The one fleeting blessing of this emaciated withered body was that he didn't feel the need to pretend that he wasn't tired, or worried or frustrated. All Might always had to be fine. Toshinori was naturally good natured and hopeful, but especially now, especially lately there were times when smiling was very difficult.

XXX

Later, he walked Naomasa out.

"I'll keep digging, it would definitely help if we knew what kind of quirk this villain had. We could check records, maybe find a lead," the younger man was saying, while organizing the files back into the binder carefully. "We do know that at least at the station, someone managed to disable all of the machinery in the building, so we can at least follow up on that."

"Right, thanks Tsukauchi."

They paused as both became aware of the presence of a policeman standing outside of a cruiser parked across a couple of spaces in the small parking lot. He was filling out a form. The policeman looked up from what he was doing and looked mildly surprised to have an audience and probably more so that one half of that audience was a senior officer.

"Oh, good morning detective Tsukauchi," he said while straightening.

"Good morning," Naomasa said pleasantly. "I thought most of the officers in the area were still stationed near the park."

"Yes, I mean they are. We are. I heard you were working on this case. I was just following up on a potential lead."

"Here?" Naomasa said, looking slightly concerned. "I hadn't heard anything new."

"Oh…well," and here he gave Toshinori a slightly guarded look. "You most likely wouldn't have…just you know…being careful."

"It's all right officer, this is Toshinori Yagi. Mr. Yagi is All Might's secretary. I was just following up with him on these incidents actually."

There was one moment where Toshinori was briefly examined with some doubt given his disheveled appearance, before the officer apparently decided that whether he looked like he was All Might's secretary or not, there would be no reason for the detective to lie about it.

"Oh," he said, after this moment passed, with a considerably more charitable demeanor. "Nice to meet you Mr. Yagi. I'm relieved to hear All Might's taking an interest! I was just questioning the woman who lives here."

The man motioned towards Rin's apartment. Toshinori frowned a little.

"I know she got caught up in the attack," he said, while absently rubbing at the back of his neck, "But is it normal for the police to question individual victims at their homes?"

"It isn't," Naomasa said, his sunny expression dissolving into one that was much more professional, clearly displeased by the potential of an officer wasting his time on something arbitrary.

"You can never be too sure, I mean she says she was a victim, but Shizuka Park is an odd place for villains to attack and she works there," the officer said, now a touch defensively.

"She was a victim, she was with the hostages when I, when All Might showed up," Toshinori said, slightly bewildered. The officer seemed to consider this and then appeared to concede.

"Well, if All Might's not suspicious of her, it's probably fine. I mean he was the one who took Hayate Hajime down. Like I said, can never be too careful. She's on a watch list so I thought I'd check it out," he said with a shrug. "I should get this report filed. Good day Detective, Mr. Yagi." The officer tipped his hat pleasantly before getting back into his car.

Toshinori watched the car pull out of the parking lot with a frown as he tried to search his memory, while being vaguely aware of a mounting feeling of unease. Naomasa looked sideways at him.

"Hayate Hajime?"

"Uh, it sounds kind of familiar," Toshinori said while shaking his head.

"Do you think it's worth looking into?"

"No," he said, this time with more confidence. "I don't know why she would be on a watch list, but she was definitely a hostage at the park." He didn't mention her strange reaction towards him when he rescued her, or the fact that she had been avoiding even normal passing conversation with him since finding out that he was connected to All Might…mainly because he suspected that it had nothing to do with park attack and was getting a very bad feeling that there was indeed another explanation for it that would most likely make things complicated for him. Naomasa smiled.

"I'll trust your instincts," he said. "I'll call you if I find out anything new."

"Thank you," Toshinori sighed.

When he headed back into his apartment he rubbed at his temples a little. He could feel a low-grade headache coming on. Later in the day, he would have to run out to the store. He hadn't bought any food since the day he moved in, but for now Toshinori sat down on his couch with his shoulders slumped and eyed the blank screen of his television for a few moments. Eventually his eyes drifted to the coffee table and he carefully gathered the empty tea cups and the stoneware teapot back on to the tray before taking it into the kitchen.

_Hayate Hajime? _He thought as he cleaned the tea leaves out of the kyusu. Sometimes it was hard to keep track of all of the things he had done during his career as a pro hero. He had been active for a long time…longer then he'd care to admit, to be honest.

He set the teapot back on the tray to dry and pulled his phone out of the pocket of his oversized slacks. It was easy enough to do a quick web search on the name and he was vaguely surprised when he got quite a few results and then as he started going through the news stories the surprise dissipated and the sinking feeling was back.

Of course, he wouldn't have remembered Hayate Hajime…because he hadn't gone by that name, in the same way no one would know who Toshinori Yagi was. But Hypoxia…even allowing for the amount of time that had passed since then, and it had been a long time, pretty early in his career…but yes, he remembered Hypoxia.

The man had terrorized Kabukicho, Tokyo for almost two years. During that time, he had been responsible for the deaths of over thirty people. His quirk was deoxygenation. Any quirk that _takes _is regarded with suspicion, especially when what the quirk takes is important, but it was the range with which the man could use his quirk that had been alarming. On one occasion he had been able to remove the oxygen from an entire building and even people who survived his attacks didn't always come out unscathed because he didn't just take the air in a person's lungs but cut off the oxygen to the brain and the bloodstream. Even if his victims did live, they would sometimes come out of the encounter with brain damage, lingering oxygen deficiencies or health conditions like asthma.

It was hard to fight against something like a lack of oxygen, but for All Might…it hadn't amounted to much. Even All Might had to breath, but he was also fast and had always had an unyielding persistence that allowed him to push past any number of obstacles with little regard to the danger involved. Of course, it might have given him more trouble now. Back then he had been young and healthy…and had had two lungs…back then it had been a matter of seconds to take the man out.

Toshinori was sitting on his couch again, flipping through the stories and resting his elbow on his knee. His other hand was over his mouth. He froze at one story before clicking on it and reading.

The media could be a very helpful thing. He'd always seen it as a valuable tool in his career. It could put people at ease, could spread valuable information very quickly, alert people to dangers and connect people during times of duress. But even he had to admit that the news could also be hungry and predatory, pouncing on a story and squeezing every bit of sustenance out of it before it was sucked dry and everyone eventually moved on to the next thing. So it was not surprising that every bit of Hayate Hajime's private life had been looked into, including his wife Junko Hajime, who was apparently committed to a mental institution shortly after his arrest and his thirteen year old daughter, Rin Hajime who was moved into foster care.

It couldn't have been easy, not only to lose everything but then to also be scrutinized and watched at an age when things were already uncertain. He thought back to the look of utter terror on her face in the park. The problem with any kind of major act, good or bad was that it was impossible to not make an impact.

"Ah…shit."

XXX

In addition to being allowed to sit around for several days, the trash left over from the crowd in the park on Respect for the Aged day had also been blown around by the autumn wind and rained on. Because of this Rin was walking along the paths in the park for hours, glumly picking up clumps of wet soggy trash that in many cases had fused together into strange trash amalgamations. Then she'd spent another hour or so trying to scrub the graffiti off of the All Might statue before managing to only smudge it up and giving up in frustration.

Normally her shift ended in the early or mid-afternoon, but by the time she had finished all of her duties it was nearly 5:30 and she'd passed over the realm of starving into the gut-wrenching valleys beyond. She'd long ago run out of candy and had skipped lunch so that her shift wouldn't run on longer and as she started back to her apartment it occurred to her that she had neglected to stop at the store the day before.

Rin groaned and changed direction. Fortunately, there was a convenience store a couple blocks away from her building. She'd pick up something quick and easy to fix there. When she was this hungry and tired, it didn't even have to be good.

Rin shivered as she stepped into the store ten minutes later. It wasn't freezing outside, it was merely cool, or perhaps crisp was a better word. The sort of temperature that was nice for an hour or so, but then slowly boar into you over the course of the day until the muscles tensed and teeth barred defensively against the chill.

She went down the aisles mindlessly and tried not to let her stomach do her shopping for her…but anyone who shopped on an empty stomach knew this was nearly an impossible task. The hunger that had been shoved in a corner while she was busy working was brought front and center as she looked at the food on the shelves. Because of this she had her arms full as she rounded a corner and collided with someone. She made a sound of frustration as half of the items fell from her hands and then nearly cursed out loud when she saw who she had run into.

"Oh, sorry…oh," Mr. Yagi had paused in the act of both trying to keep any more of her things from slipping from her hands while also trying to collect the things that already had. A brief expression of guilt passed over his face before it was gone again, and he resumed the task of picking up her few stricken items. "Miss Hajime, I apologize, I didn't see you."

"I'm pretty sure I walked into you," Rin said, perhaps a bit sharper then she intended. "Thanks," she added in a mumble as she took the fallen items from him.

Rin had spent the last couple of days trying to avoid her neighbor. Kaiya most likely would have pointed out that this was immature if she had known about it, and that avoidance was not going to be helpful or practical in the long run. Rin knew it was immature and knew it was impractical, especially after one occasion on the previous day when she'd exited her apartment, saw him and in the face of his puzzled smile had immediately returned to her apartment. She knew she would eventually have to interact with him again, he lived below her after all, she just didn't expect it to be here and now.

"Uh, it's nice to have a store this close," her neighbor said, in a clear attempt at pleasantries, although she noticed he seemed to be a lot more uncomfortable then he had on previous occasions. Maybe he'd picked up on the fact that she was avoiding him…she hadn't exactly been subtle about it.

"Yeah, just…shopping," she said and left the statement hanging in the air before it occurred to her how stupid it sounded. _Why did you say that? He knows that Rin…you're in a store, he just said you were. _She resisted the urge groan and then just moved around him towards the counter.

The situation didn't improve from there as he approached the counter shortly after she did, and she was aware of the painful silence that stretched over them, accompanied only by a beeping sound as the clerk scanned her stuff. During this time, she watched each item, practically squirming in place. Behind her, Mr. Yagi had apparently abandoned any attempts at small talk, which should have made it better…but didn't. It really didn't. As she stood and wished for the moment to end another horrible thought occurred to her.

_You live in the same building. _Rin stared dismally forward as the prospect of having to walk home in the company of this man became a very real possibility. She made a split decision to leave the store as soon as humanly possible. She was tired, and her feet hurt, but if she walked briskly then there would be enough distance between them by the time he finished checking out.

There was still a part of her that knew that this wasn't a good solution, but right now she didn't care. So, when the cashier finished ringing everything up and she handed him the money, the change he handed back to her had barely touched her hand before she headed for the door, moving past Mr. Yagi and avoiding his gaze. She was aware that his eyes were on her as she left.

It would have worked. She would have been a half a block away by the time he finished checking out, but as she got to the end of the street she realized she didn't have her keys…she'd taken them out of her pocket to get to her money and had left them on the counter. Rin sighed and then, defeated turned back to the convenience store.

She nearly ran into Mr. Yagi a second time as he was leaving.

"I was hoping to catch you," he said with some embarrassment as he removed his hand from one of the pockets in his oversized coat, brandishing her keys. Rin took them from him wearily.

"Thanks," she said, aware that at this point there was nothing she could do but give in to the whims of the universe, a universe that probably hated her. "Shoganai," she added under her breath.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing," Rin said as they both started back towards the apartment. Rin settled into an easy gait…there wasn't much of a reason to hurry at this point…it would just make things even more awkward. Her neighbor walked quietly beside her, with one hand in his pocket and his shopping bag clutched in the other. She tried to cast a surreptitious look at him and then quickly looked away when she caught his eye. Around them the sun was starting to set, the autumn chill grew more persistent with its absence.

_Just say something…_she thought to herself. _Kaiya's right, just because he works for All Might doesn't mean he knows who you are. _She was trying a number of statements in her head and was finding them all insufficient. Eventually he broke the silence, nearly making her jump in the process.

"To accept one's fate," he said. She looked at him with some bewilderment. He met her gaze. "Shoganai. It can't be helped," he added before giving her a sad smile, the sort of smile that reached inside and squeezed.

"Right..." she said with some embarrassment.

Rin weighed her options. She was tired and frustrated and new that she wasn't going to be able to pull off 'normal citizen.' That left two options, either she was going to come off as rude which at best meant walking in continued silence and at worst meant being short tempered with someone who had been pretty courteous so far, all things considered, or she was going to have to be direct. Both options didn't generally go well for her.

"Look I'm not…really…good with normal people conversation," she said, while trying to ignore how awkward this sounded to her ear. He seemed to consider this.

"Normal people conversation?"

"You know…like…nice weather we're having…how's your health? Do you like…sports…" she muttered the last. Her neighbor was watching her with mounting amusement.

"Oh, you mean boring conversation!" He said cheerfully. She looked up at him, surprised and then looked away again as she was subjected to another smile, this time brighter and warmer. Some people smiled, and it never reached their eyes, but Mr. Yagi's whole face lit up

"Uh…yeah…I guess…small talk…I'm not good with small talk."

"I don't think anyone is good at small talk…it's usually an indication that the conversation is in trouble," he said with some concern. "Ah, I see…well, we don't have to talk if it makes you uncomfortable," he added before coughing a little into the back of his hand. Rin felt another squeeze in her insides.

"Silence is worse," she muttered.

Rin recalled the conversation between her and Kaiya. She had said Mr. Yagi was weird…and he was…in a way…but Kaiya's descriptor fit better. He stood out. He was too tall, too thin, too…nice, his blonde hair stuck up wildly around his head, his eyes were so blue they almost looked like they were lit from the inside, his clothes were several sizes too big…which made even less sense now that she knew he apparently also worked for the #1 hero. Surely, he could afford clothes that fit properly? It wasn't even as if they were bad clothes. The coat he was wearing looked perfectly nice and sturdy, it was a rich navy-blue color with two sets of silver buttons up the front…it was just also meant for a man who was much much larger then him.

"You like Mikio Naruse?" He said, interrupting her thoughts and sending her confused mind in a completely different direction.

"Wha?" She said bewilderedly.

"Your shirt. It's from a Mikio Naruse film isn't it?"

"Oh…yeah…right…" Rin said, while looking down at the graphic on her shirt. It was an image of a geisha. "Yeah, it is, it's from 'Apart from You.'"

"Have you seen many of his other films?"

"A few…I...like silent movies," she said self-consciously. "Well…old movies…not just the…silent ones."

"But not silence," he said with a smile, which became more embarrassed when he saw her expression. "Sorry! I wasn't trying to make fun of you," he added quickly while rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well no…I mean it's not really the same thing," Rin muttered. She was feeling off balance again. She wasn't used to having conversations that delved even slightly into her personal preferences with…well…really with anyone but Kaiya.

"I like Mikio Naruse…although his films are usually pretty sad," he said.

"I think they're…comfortable," Rin said, before scowling a little. Trying to describe how she felt about anything often resulted in something that was…unsatisfying…oversimplified. "I mean…comforting…even the sad films…feel…almost kind? That probably doesn't make any sense." She added in a mumble as she ran her hand through her dark hair with some frustration.

"No, it makes sense…Mikio Naruse was good at gentle sadness. I guess I just always liked comedies and epics better myself…" he added with a nervous shrug. "Well, if you'd ever like to borrow any of his films, I'm pretty sure I have most of his released work," he said as they reached the parking lot. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

"Oh…uh…thanks…" she said shyly.

"I don't have much time to watch them myself, it would be nice to know someone's getting use out of them," he said before bowing slightly. "It was nice talking to you Miss Hajime."

"Er…actually…this is probably going to sound weird but could you just…just call me Rin…I prefer Rin," she said. He looked vaguely surprised as he straightened.

"Oh…uh sure. Have a good evening…Rin," he said.

"Yep…sounded a little weird," she said under her breath as she started up the stairs. She turned around about halfway up. "Oh uh, you too…you have a good evening too…right."

XXX

Toshinori unlocked the door to his apartment and stepped into the dark room. He shed his coat and set his groceries on the counter before eyeing his collection of films thoughtfully.

_This isn't something you should involve yourself in. _A small treacherous thought flitted through his mind… _You can't fix this. There are other things that need your attention. Best just to let this go…let things be._

Unfortunately, letting things be was not something he'd ever gotten the hang of. He could tell himself to not get involved as much as he liked, but he wasn't at all confident that he would listen. Toshinori frowned.

"Shit."


	5. What Friday Nights Are For

Chapter 5:

What Friday Nights Are For

It was Friday morning and Toshinori was feeling almost good, better then he had for the last few days, anyway. This was mainly because he managed to get an okay night's sleep, which was a rare luxury for him. He stretched to a series of pops in his shoulders and long skinny arms and then broke the stretch with a brief coughing fit. When it subsided, he got out of bed and made his way to the kitchen.

Toshinori didn't really own any clothing that fit him properly, and this included what he wore to sleep. Because of this the drawstrings on his sweatpants were pulled tight and tied in a knot and he was wearing a shirt with a neckline so large that much of his collarbone was exposed. He was aware of how awkward this body was, especially when contrasted with his height and how large his hands and feet still were. For the most part he tried not to dwell on it too much.

After eyeing the contents of his fridge, he decided to take a chance on eating more than plain rice this morning and pulled some fish from his freezer. He set it in one of the two pans he owned before inspecting the small induction stove. It was a single burner that was affixed to the counter-top. Because he so rarely cooked for himself, he hadn't used it since he moved in. After pressing a few buttons, the stovetop began to heat up.

It didn't take long to cook the fish or rice since he was limited to very small portions and making more then he could eat would just lead to leftovers he would never finish and eventually would have to throw away. Once both were done, he turned off the stove and carried the small plate to the couch.

As he sat the plate on his coffee table, he eyed a small stack of videos he had pulled from his shelf and placed on its surface the night before. He probably could have waited to see if his neighbor asked, but even after a few brief encounters he got the impression that she wouldn't. And it wasn't as if he was interfering…not really…it was just a simple gesture.

Toshinori sighed and turned on the television. As usual, it was already tuned into the news. He watched for a few minutes, while taking small bites of his rice. He hadn't gotten too far into his breakfast, when a breaking story came on. An office building a few miles away was on lockdown, the newscaster wasn't going into a lot of detail as to why but was urging citizens to keep their distance. Toshinori had been criticized in the past for reacting to every incident that came to his attention, generally by the few people he allowed to get close to him, the people who knew he wasn't invincible. Still, if he knew someone needed his help, it was difficult not to act.

"Well, guess I'm skipping breakfast after all," Toshinori muttered to himself as he set his chopsticks down carefully.

On his way out, he paused and eyed the videos again. He picked them up, taping a quickly scrawled note on them in the process.

XXX

The Kawaguchi energy building was in an area of the city with several other office buildings. Despite the crowd gathering outside, the building itself was oddly quiet. This was mainly because the power was out for entire block.

Naomasa parked his cruiser outside of the police line and walked up to a slightly frustrated looking officer who was surrounded by curious civilians.

"I told you, we are not at liberty to impart any information at this time," the officer was telling a man who was eyeing the building curiously.

"Is it a villain? The power's out in my office, is it the group that attacked the train station the other day?" The man asked.

"Please just go back to your workplace, sir…oh, detective, go on through," the officer added while letting Naomasa pass. Tsukauchi moved through the police barrier, leaving the officer to continue his argument with the civilian as he approached another group of policemen setting up a few feet away.

"Good morning detective," one of the officers said wearily. "I'm not entirely sure how to begin with this one."

"Take your time," Tsukauchi said, with some concern. He had been working almost nonstop since the day before, going through various files and reports in the hopes of finding something relevant to the attacks in Minato. Kawaguchi energy…or rather the owner of the company, was someone that had been brought to his attention earlier in the week, along with several other people with quirks that could potentially disable or manipulate energy signals. Ryo Kawaguchi had been put on the short list because after some digging there was evidence that his corporation might be involved in illegal dealings. Then, this morning, there was this. It couldn't be a coincidence.

"The fact of the matter is, we're not sure if the building is even under attack. We think the employees are being held hostage…but this could also be some desperate act because we started investigating them. A witness said that Ryo Kawaguchi entered the building, they thought they heard gunfire and the power went out shortly after. All of the doors are locked and there hasn't been any communication from inside."

"Anyone try to get in?"

"No sir. We haven't heard any more gunfire, either, but we're waiting for more backup."

"All right…let's focus on trying to find a way-" Naomasa was interrupted by a commotion behind him. Something had clearly gotten the attention of the small crowd gathering outside of the building. He took a few steps back and looked up at the roof, where a figure, hard to make out from the angle and distance was standing, feet half over the edge. All that was evident was that he appeared to be wearing a suit and he was swaying.

"My god, is he going to jump?" He heard someone say from behind him. Naomasa opened his mouth to shout an order, but it died in his throat as the man on the ledge tipped forward, almost lazily, as if allowing momentum to make his decision for him.

The building was twenty stories high and would have meant certain death. However, the man barely even fell a few feet before there was a flash of red and blue. Unlike the man in the suit, All Might was distinct enough even from this distance as he appeared out of nowhere and caught the jumper cleanly in the air.

Naomasa sighed with relief as the man was hoisted back onto the roof and away from the edge.

"Get the doors open, find a way up to the roof." Tsukauchi ordered.

XXX

The man didn't resist as All Might pulled him back up to the top of the building. In fact, once he was clear of the edge, he crumpled as if all of the energy left his body. The big hero laid him down carefully.

"That was quite a scare, you should be more careful," All Might said. He frowned as he realized the man was wearing a mask. As in the previous cases, there was writing across the blank face. This time it read; Weakness. All Might paused, before carefully removing it, aware that it could be considered tampering with evidence. For now, that was not what he was concerned about. He was dreading what would be underneath, remembering the train station. It was therefore, a relief to find that the man was still alive, although the relief was slightly diminished by the state he was in.

He was pale, and it was clear that he wasn't sure where he was. Tears were streaming down his face from puffy bloodshot eyes and his expression was one of terror with his lips pulled back in a grimace. After a couple of seconds, he focused on All Might and a light turned on somewhere, as the emptiness in his expression abated somewhat.

The terror shifted to desperation and the man clutched at him for a moment, opening his mouth.

"A-All Migh…" he managed, before his hands dropped and he fell unconscious. All Might was still crouching next to him when Tsukauchi and a couple of other policemen made it to the roof a couple minutes later.

"He's unconscious and needs immediate medical attention," All Might said as Tsukauchi approached and kneeled across from him to look at the man. His voice was calm and sturdy but lacked his usual bravado.

"An ambulance is on it's way," Naomasa said as he examined the jumper's face and then eyed the mask lying beside him. "This is Ryo Kawaguchi…if you hadn't been here, he would have jumped to his death. Did he say anything before he passed out?"

"He didn't look like someone who was trying to commit suicide," All Might said. "I don't think he even knew where he was." With anyone else, Toshinori probably would have tried to maintain All Might's usual cadence and exuberance, even though he wasn't feeling especially cheerful, but considering Naomasa knew the real him and most of the other officers were busy with other matters, he allowed himself a tired sigh.

"He was, is a major suspect…" Naomasa said as All Might stood.

Ryo Kawaguchi hadn't said much…but his expression…it didn't look like the expression of a criminal being caught in the act, or even a desperate man at the end of his rope…it looked like he was asking for help.

XXX

Normally Rin didn't take time out of her day for lunch. Occasionally she'd stop at a street vendor for something small, but she generally held out until after her shift to eat a full meal. Today, however, Kaiya had sent her a text about halfway through the morning asking her to meet at a small udon restaurant a couple minutes away from the park. The other woman was already sitting at a table and eyeing a menu when Rin walked up and took the seat across from her.

"I thought we were hanging out later tonight," Rin said while opening her own menu. It was Friday. Rin was aware that Friday nights were allegedly meant to be enjoyed or celebrated in some fashion, generally with an abundance of alcohol and in places that were too hot, too crowded and too noisy, but she was aware of this in the same way that fish are aware of the sky viz a viz, it was another world that wasn't meant for her.

"I apologize for subjecting you to my presence twice in one day," Kaiya responded. "I have the day off and figured you hadn't eaten so I thought I'd offer."

"I didn't mean it like that," Rin said with a frown, ignoring the implication in Kaiya's second statement. She almost always skipped breakfast and lunch, meaning she subsisted almost entirely on sugar and caffeine until at least the early afternoon. When she did eat, she didn't eat poorly, and she could cook well enough, it was just one of those habits that she'd picked up at some point and didn't feel the need to change.

"I know," Kaiya said, as she looked up from her menu with a smile. "And I appreciate your suffering through a bit of fun tonight."

"Pubs aren't fun," Rin said, closing her menu.

"There are a lot of people who would disagree with you on that, what are you getting?"

"The kitsune udon," Rin replied.

"It's on me, you can get something else. They have one with curry," Kaiya pointed out.

"Curry's fine, I like my udon simple, maybe with a soft-boiled egg, if I'm feeling fancy," Rin said.

After they got their food, Rin untied the industrial apron she wore for work and then, remembering something, dug through the pockets.

"What's that?" Kaiya asked as Rin pulled a bundle of dvds out.

"Found them at my door today, when I was leaving for work," Rin mumbled. She had in fact found them a bit to the left of her door, positioned so that they would not be in the way and would be out of the weather. There had been a quickly scrawled note as well, which was still affixed to the top of them with a bit of tape, now slightly crumpled from being inside her apron pocket all morning.

"Movies?" Kaiya said while scooting in a bit on her chair to get a closer look.

"Yeah…my neighbor left them for me," Rin said, sounding slightly downcast. Kaiya eyed her with some amusement before picking up the note and unfolding it.

"'Since you enjoy Mikio Naruse and comfortable silence'" Kaiya read aloud. "Comfortable silence?"

"It's something stupid I said about old silent movies," Rin said glumly. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the gesture…or that she wasn't interested in the films, it was just…uncomfortable. Any attention, good or bad was uncomfortable.

"Hmm, I'm impressed, Murasaki," Kaiya said while giving the note another once over.

"Impressed?" Rin asked wearily.

"It took me two months to get you to tell me something about yourself," she said.

"That was back in Highschool," Rin said with some annoyance as she grabbed the note from Kaiya and eyed it before setting it back down on the stack of dvds.

"Yes, and things have changed so much since then," Kaiya said, her amusement clearly growing at Rin's expense.

"Sarcasm doesn't suite you," Rin said as she crossed her arms and sat back in her seat. "I don't get it, I don't understand why he's even trying…"

"You're upset that he's being nice to you?"

"No, I'm not…upset that he's nice…that would be…silly."

"I have a speech about friendship that I use on my first graders if you think you need a refresher," Kaiya said with her mouth slightly full.

"I'm glad you find this so hilarious," Rin said while casting a dark look at her friend. "I just…don't know how to deal with…this," she added in a quieter voice while motioning towards the dvds.

"Old movies?"

"No, when he said I could borrow some movies, I didn't think he actually meant he was going to…pick some out and leave them for me…or follow up on it, which means I have to talk to him again…and he's probably going to ask about them, which means at least one really awkward conversation is in my future and probably more than that."

"You're right, he's being completely unreasonable," Kaiya said. Rin glared at her.

"I know it's not unreasonable, Kaiya…you know that I know that!" she snapped back.

After a moment, Kaiya swallowed and set her chopsticks down on the edge of her bowl.

"Here, give me your hand."

"No, I don't need…I don't want an analysis right now…can't I just complain about something stupid without you getting like this."

"We've been friends for a while now, right?"

"Yeah…?" Rin said suspiciously

"Right, which is why I know you like lemon soda, and hate folkmetal and that you always have candy because you get anxious when you don't have something to suck or chew on."

"What's your p-…" Rin started before Kaiya interrupted her.

"And you know I don't like spicy food, and the color yellow makes me sad and I'm not likely to give into your pleading if I think it's not in your best interest, so give me your hand," Kaiya said. Rin groaned but extended her hand after a moment anyway.

"Do you feel my annoyance…because I'm emitting high levels of annoyance right now," Rin said as Kaiya took her hand.

"Shush, now…tell me how you're feeling. Try to be honest."

"This is dumb."

"The sooner you cooperate the sooner we can both get back to eating our noodles."

"No, that was me being honest, this is dumb and I'm feeling very frustrated that the one person on the planet that I made friends with is an empath."

"So, you're feeling defensive and you're lashing out at me because you're nervous. Are you nervous because he works for All Might or is it just because he's nice to you?"

"Maybe I just don't need any more friends, maybe the one I've got is already more than enough."

"So…a little of both? Do you find him unpleasant?"

"No," Rin said, forgoing her cynicism for a moment. It wasn't like it was doing her any good.

"But you don't want to be friendly with him?"

"Yes."

"Yes, meaning you don't? Or you do?"

"I don't know Kaiya, interacting with people makes me tired. It's easier not to."

"Right, I'm going to give you some homework," Kaiya said while releasing her hand. Rin groaned.

"I don't want homework, I hate it when you do this."

"We're going out to the bar tonight," Kaiya said, ignoring her.

"Yet another thing I let you talk me into for some reason."

"You should invite him to come with us," Kaiya said as she picked up her chopsticks. Rin was brought out of her gloominess with surprised jolt.

"What? No! that's…" Rin fumbled for the right words. "Saying hello or good morning when I see him in passing is one thing, I'm not going to invite him to hang out at a bar…"

"Fine, then I'll do it. He's trying to be friendly. I know it's a difficult concept to grasp, but it is possible to have more then one friend at a time. Inviting someone to a bar on a Friday night is a normal thing that people do to break the ice when they don't know each other very well," Kaiya continued as she dug into her noodles again. "It'll be good for you."

XXX

After the ambulance arrived and Kawaguchi had been loaded in to be taken to a nearby hospital, All Might headed back towards his apartment. As was generally the case when he was out and about, he was interrupted several times by various issues that needed resolving. Most of them were on the smaller side, stuff that the police could probably handle, but Toshinori wasn't about to ignore even a small cry for help if he was around to do something about it.

After the third such incident, which involved a suddenly very unlucky pickpocket, he was a few blocks away from his building, near the park that had been attacked earlier in the week.

He eyed the tree line and wondered vaguely if his neighbor was working and if she had found the videos he had left for her. Though he had been distracted by the information about her father and the inevitable feelings of guilt that caused, he also had been vaguely concerned about how she was doing in general since he had run into her at 3am a few mornings prior. Unfortunately, as Toshinori he couldn't really ask her about the attack at the park, since he shouldn't know that she had been caught up in it in the first place. Come to think of it, he was pretty sure he shouldn't know where she worked either…so even trying to get around to it in conversation would probably come across as a bit odd. But as All Might…well perhaps he could pop into the park really quick and check up on her…it would only take a few minutes…

_'No,'_ he thought with a frown. He shouldn't get involved. He should just head home and perhaps actually get around to actually eating some breakfast…or lunch now…as it were and mind his own business. Right…that would probably be for the best.

XXX

"Hey there!"

Rin had been in the process of raking the leaves that had begun to fall after the inclement weather of the past few days when someone addressed her from behind…cheerfully and loudly. She turned, took a half a second to register All Might before reacting in a way that had very little to do with any sort of rational thought by shouting and swinging the rake at him.

He evaded the ballistic gardening implement with impressive reflexes, but then, he was All Might. He had no doubt avoided much faster and deadlier attacks in the past.

"Sorry! Didn't mean to startle you!" He said, seemingly unfazed.

Rin's brain caught up with the rest of her…not that it did her much good as she gaped at the huge man in front of her. She could think of very few things that sounded worse than All Might suddenly showing up. In terms of surprise work visitors this was basically her worst-case scenario…well no…her father would be worse…but this was a close second. And here she had been dreading going to the bar tonight and trying to struggle through an awkward conversation with her neighbor.

_All Might…it's All Might…out of nowhere, just standing there…All Might, _she thought to herself as he straightened, his big dumb grin never wavering. _I have nightmares that start like this._

"Er…" was all she managed as she lowered the rake.

"Do you have time for a quick chat?"

She continued to stare. His expression remained unchanged. That was one of the things she found most unsettling about All Might; since he always smiled, it was impossible to know what he was thinking. This coupled with the deep shadows in his eyes, made him appear sinister to her…fake…disingenuous.

"Uh…wha…why are _you_…_here_?" She stammered finally. The question came out as an accusation. This time there was a slight flicker in his expression, before it was gone again.

"Oh, I thought I just said…I wanted a few minutes of your time…to talk…sorry if I was unclear!" His voice was still cheerful…and loud…he was so loud! Was this some prelude to an interrogation? Did pro heroes do that? She looked around to see if anyone was near, but it was cold today and the park had not been especially busy.

"Y-you…uh…I'm raking…?" She muttered stupidly, while gesturing at the rake as if to back up her statement.

"Ah, of course, my apologies for bothering you at work," All Might said. "Will you be busy for much longer?"

"Er…an hour or two …" she muttered, while clutching at the rake tightly to keep her hands from shaking.

"Hmm," All Might said while eyeing the ground around them briefly. She had a trash bag half full of leaves lying nearby. "May I?" He asked while indicating an empty roll of trash bags lying next to the one she was using.

"Uh…ok," she said, becoming less and less certain that this wasn't some kind of weird nightmare. The words had barely left her mouth as he grabbed one. There was a brief multicolored blur and Rin gritted her teeth as her jacket blew around her, along with the trees in the general vicinity, as a sudden gust of wind rushed through them, taking All Might with it. Suddenly, she was alone again. "What the hell…"

After a minute she unfroze. Maybe she had eaten something weird at lunch and was passed out somewhere or hallucinating? Rin looked around uneasily, even walking to the end of the path to check if there was any sign of the big hero before making her way back to her equipment. She prodded at the empty trash bags suspiciously before allowing herself to relax a bit. Should she get back to work? To be honest whatever motivation she had had before was gone and suddenly the bar was sounding good, even if it was busy and even if her neighbor accepted the invitation Kaiya was forcing her to extend to him.

She had just decided to at least finish raking the immediate area when All Might came back, with a full bag of leaves in hand. It took an extraordinary amount of restraint on her part to not swing the rake at him a second time when he popped back into existence, another gust of wind being the only indication of actual movement.

"There, I think that's all of them," he said as he set the bag down. Rin eyed it wildly.

"All of…wait what," she asked, her nerves twanging.

"The leaves…I think I got all of them. There may be a few I missed, of course, it's a big park. Was there anything else?"

She wasn't sure of her expression exactly, but she could feel that her jaw was clinched. Actually, her whole body felt like it was clinched, and it wasn't just because of the cold.

It had, of course, previously occurred to her that because she was living in Minato Tokyo, there was a possibility that she might come in contact with All Might…but despite her fears, she knew, logically, that the chances of him appearing out of nowhere and actually having a conversation with her, was about as good as the chances of being in a plane crash. She might fear it, but it probably wouldn't happen…so the fact that it was, in fact happening right that second was a concept she was still having a hard time grasping.

"No," she said through gritted teeth, barely hearing her response over the screaming in her head. "That was all. I just need to clean up."

"Great! Would you like some help?"

"No!" She said, aware that she had shouted. The only change in his demeanor was a slight tilting of his head. "No, I…no."

"All right then, I'll wait here," he said while giving her a thumbs up, his grin somehow getting broader.

XXX

There was a small shed where all of the larger equipment she needed for her job was stored. Rin went to it brusquely, unlocked it and closed the door behind her. Once inside she buried her face in her large gardening gloves and let out a muffled scream.

Feeling a bit better, but still like she had walked into some sort of udon induced nightmare, she paced around the small shed with her arms crossed. Okay, All Might was standing near the west exit…waiting for her…to have a chat. It would probably be best to just get it over with. Kaiya would have probably encouraged her to just confront him. He would hardly make an appointment to drag her to the police, right?

Right, that made sense. On the other hand, if she exited from here and took the dirt path that went through the part of the park with the statues, she could get to the north exit without him seeing her. That sounded better. From there, she could duck into the coffee shop, find an obscure corner and wait until he went away. He was the number one hero, no doubt there were a million other things that required his attention.

That same small part of her, the part that tried to apply reason when the rest of her made admittedly terrible choices was trying to get her attention now, pointing out that it was monumentally stupid to try to evade All Might...it was All Might…no doubt hundreds had tried to run away from him in the past.

Unfortunately, she rarely listened to that voice when she was overwhelmed, opting instead for the poor choice with the opportunity to possibly avoid a conversation with the man that most of japan adored.

She exited the shed and began down the path quickly, trying not to break into a run until she could see the gate to the north of the park. She barely looked around as she walked, keeping her head down. When she did finally see the exit, her pace quickened, and she ran the rest of the way to the café.

The barista looked surprised as she burst through the door. Rin had stopped by at café enough on her way to work so that she was probably at least partly recognizable to the small staff, but she wasn't especially personable and barely conversed with anyone there apart from making her order. The girl working the counter was young, probably under twenty and she was watching Rin with a small frown as she made her way to a small table as far away from the windows as possible, wheezing as she did.

She pulled her inhaler out as she sat.

"Um…did you want a drink miss?" The girl asked after a moment, slightly on edge.

"Yeah…just tea," Rin said after she caught her breath. Her mouth and throat were horribly dry…had been horribly dry since All Might had shown up in the first place.

"What kind?"

"Doesn't matter, whatever," Rin said as she lowered her head into her hands. She took a few long deep breaths, while listening to the sounds of the barista behind the counter, presumably making her tea. After a few moments she was vaguely aware that the girl had put a cup down beside her, apparently not wishing to interrupt whatever it was she was doing, or perhaps just not wishing to get involved.

Her breathing had finally become even again, and her heart had slowed to a normal pace when there was a very definite change in the room around her. Rin's quirk, like all quirks, was more complex then it appeared from the outset. In order to control oxygen levels, she had to be aware of oxygen.

It was a hard concept to describe to someone else…because oxygen is everywhere, and it wasn't something you could see, but it was something that had to enter and exit a room nonetheless, and when she took it, it had to go somewhere, it didn't just pop out of existence. It was more like controlling the flow of water, damming it up.

Weirdly enough she'd found a long time ago that in order to use her quirk, she had to hold her breath…she wasn't sure why…but it didn't work if she didn't. In addition to this, she couldn't direct the oxygen back to herself, which would have admittedly been useful. The point was, she had to be able to feel the flow of oxygen and right now there was a change in the air, a change in the oxygen levels in the room, as something…no someone…a very big someone was suddenly standing behind her.

"Really Miss Hajime, if you were in a hurry, you could have just said."

Rin jolted up, knocking her tea off the table in the process. All Might caught it before it hit the floor, wincing slightly as some of the liquid splashed over his hand.

"Careful! Agh, hot!" he said as he placed it back on the table. Rin watched, horrified as the big man slid into the chair across from her, looking completely out of place on the small cheap piece of furniture. The barista, who's reception had been less then warm at her entrance was positively vibrating with excitement at seeing him. As she approached the table she looked like she was going squeal or faint as she stared at the number 1 hero in disbelief. If there was one small mercy, it was that the café was empty otherwise.

"Oh my god, holy shit, All Might," the barista said, her eyes lighting up. "Oh…I shouldn't have said that at work," she muttered before continuing excitedly. "I am such a huge fan, can I have your autograph?"

All Might turned his smile on the girl. Rin unfroze as his attention was diverted from her and resisted the urge to try and run for the door because obviously that wasn't going to work. How the hell had he found her so quickly?

"Of course," he said cheerfully. "Do you have something for me to sign?"

"Uh, oh…crap, I'll get something, hang on…oh do you want a drink?" The girl asked, suddenly remembering that it was her job to serve customers.

'Well I…"

"Ooh! Actually, my boss just named a drink after you, I'll get you one…on the house…holy shit he'll be so excited," the girl continued to chatter as she backed up towards the counter, nearly tripping over a chair in the process.

The big hero turned back towards Rin. She was not in an especially perceptive mindset, as for the most part she was just trying not to shout or be sick, but she did notice that there was a hint of embarrassment in his smile now.

"Anyways," he said as he cleared his throat. "As I said before, I only want a few minutes of your time."

"Okay," she said weakly through chapped lips, suddenly remembering the dryness in her mouth and throat. She grasped at her tea, ignoring the fact that the water was still extremely hot. After taking a scorching mouthful, she continued to hold the cup in front of her, as if having it between her and All Might offered some sort of protection. "What…what do you want?"

"I wanted to see how you were doing?" He said, his voice booming in the small café.

"How I'm doing?" She asked with a frown.

"Yeah, after the attack, on the park! It was tough situation and you seemed rattled!"

Before Rin could answer, the barista came back with a pad of paper and a drink that looked like a rainbow had thrown up on it. She sat the drink in front of All Might who eyed it, his eyebrows creasing slightly.

"Here you go, All Might," she said excitedly as he took the pad of paper from her carefully. "Oh crap, I forgot a pen!"

"No sweat, I have one!" He said as a pen materialized from somewhere, probably his belt and he signed the page with a large, gaudy impractical signature that fit the man to a T, before handing it back to the girl. "There you go, thanks for your support!" She made a noise that sounded like it could have been the start of a squeal.

After a moment, when the younger girl hadn't left, it became clear that she was still waiting on something.

"Is there something else I can do for you, miss?" He asked after a moment.

"Er, yes the drink…I'd love to hear what you think of it."

"Ah, of course," he said as he eyed the drink again. It had whipped cream on top and was covered in multicolored sprinkles. To Rin, it looked disgusting, a novelty that probably had more sugar injected in it then most deserts.

"Colorful!" All Might said as he let out a strange sounding chuckle, which almost seemed to end in a whimper before picking up the cup and taking a drink. Judging by his reaction, it was probably as horrible as it looked. In fact, for a moment it looked like he might spit it out. Instead he swallowed, coughing a little in the process. "It's very strong!"

"It has six shots of espresso in it and three kinds of syrup," the girl said anxiously.

"I can tell! Er, I'll just let it cool a bit!" He said as he set it back on the table and gave the girl a thumbs up. The girl grinned happily.

"That's it?" Rin said as the barista floated away.

"Sorry?" All Might said while carefully pushing the drink away from him and grabbing a napkin.

"That's all you wanted to talk about…the…the park. That's why you're here?"

"Ah, yes! Just wanted to make sure everything was going all right!" He said, while absently wiping at his mouth, to get rid of any remnants of sprinkles or whipped cream.

"…Yes?" Rin said, aware that her answer sounded more like a question. "Was there…uh was there anything else?"

"Hmm? Oh well, a small matter. I know I said you should find an exit, but you disappeared quite suddenly and on your own! Not very smart in the circumstances," he continued, his voice taking on more serious tones. "Also, while I admire your bravery, trying to go after a strong attacker with a gardening tool was extremely risky."

Rin eyed him bewilderedly. Some of her terror had subsided a bit, making way for weariness and confusion…and a headache. All Might was…lecturing her? Was this…some sort of strange act, a play to get her to confess to something? For the second time in the last couple of days she weighed her options. She needed a drink, or two…or five, but right now what she really needed was for this conversation to end. If he really did just track her down to chastise her about trying to take matters into her own hands at the park, then perhaps she could just politely agree and promise to never do it again. She was already failing hard at behaving like a normal citizen…especially in contrast to the barista, but maybe she could just play it off as shock at seeing the number one hero in person.

As she thought about this, something else occurred to her, slowly, like a drop of ink in water. Earlier, when he first arrived at the café…he'd called her by her name. And just like that, the fear was back…along with a surprise dose of anger, which mingled with the fear, creating a sour, bitter feeling in the pit of her stomach.

_He knows who I am…he damn well knows. _Her grip on her tea tightened. And she knew, from experience that she was about to be unpleasant.

"You, if you have something to say, just say it."

"Sorry…?" he said, his expression flickering again, this time with confusion.

"You expect me to believe you followed me in here just for that?" She continued, feeling her face flush with anger. Anger built from years and years of being regarded with suspicion and being treated like a villain because of her father…and because of this man. Because when All Might did something, people paid attention and if All Might took down a criminal, everyone wanted to hear every single solitary detail, so they could praise him and his stupid smile and his stupid hair. "Is this an interrogation? Are you grilling me to see if I know something? I don't know anything about that attack!"

"Grilling? Of course not! I was only…"

"First the police and now the number one hero? Don't you people have better things to do with your time?" She continued, feeling slightly dizzy.

"Please, I wasn't…" he started as she stood from her chair, ignoring the look the barista was giving her from behind the counter.

"I am not a fucking criminal," she said. All Might's protests stopped as he eyed her with surprise. Actual surprise that broke through that impenetrable expression of his, making him look almost human. It was enough to make Rin hesitate for a fraction of a second. Long enough to start hearing that little voice again.

_Well, if he wasn't suspicious of you before..._In the ensuing silence, she pushed her chair back and headed towards the door before he could say anything else.

XXX

Kaiya arrived at Rin's apartment complex at eight o' clock. As she exited her husband's car, she saw that Mr. Yagi was outside, in the process of getting his mail. The man noticed her and smiled a little, while raising his hand. He looked tired. She returned the smile as she headed towards the stairs up to Rin's apartment.

_I'd bet money she hasn't bothered to ask him, _she thought to herself as he disappeared back into his own flat.

Kaiya knocked on her friend's door, crossing her arms against the cold as she did. Rin answered and eyed her wearily.

"I guess you didn't get my text," Rin said.

"The text you sent trying to weasel your way out of tonight. No, I must have completely missed it."

Rin sighed, her expression reminding Kaiya very much of when they were back in highschool. She had always managed to exude a sense of ennui, like nothing ever got to her. It was something she kind of admired about her some of the time and found completely frustrating the rest of the time. Especially when she was younger, she had thought that Rin was one of the few people she had met who truly didn't care about what other people thought of her, but of course that hadn't been entirely true.

"Where's the nerd?" Rin asked as she grabbed a slightly heavier jacket then she usually wore, presumably to combat the cool evening weather.

"Taro is waiting by the car. Be nice, Murasaki," Kaiya said, while casting her a look that she usually reserved for her first graders. Taro was Kaiya's husband and even though he and Rin had never gotten past 'casual acquaintance' mostly due to the fact that he could be a bit high strung and she was not especially accommodating, the fact that her friend accepted him at all was a bit of a triumph. "Did you invite your neighbor, or is that a stupid question?"

"Guess," Rin said as she started down the stairs. Kaiya rolled her eyes and followed her.

"I swear, sometimes you're harder to deal with then my students. Did you even try?" Rin cast her a brief look that nevertheless conveyed that no, she hadn't.

XXX

In truth, after her impromptu All Might encounter, she hadn't even avoided it on purpose. Although, now that she was thinking of it, asking All Might's secretary to come to a bar after she'd shouted at the big hero in public didn't sound like an especially fun time.

She had debated about mentioning her encounter with All Might to the other woman but ultimately decided it was something that would sound mad via text…and also maybe out loud. Plus, she didn't really want to think about it just yet. It was probably a good thing that Kaiya had ignored her attempts to get out of socializing tonight…because otherwise she might've just stayed in and gotten drunk by herself…which was probably unhealthy behavior.

Still, regardless of whether or not she wished to invite Mr. Yagi out, she knew her friend. If she didn't at least make an effort with her neighbor the woman would do it for her…and Kaiya had a way of making things more embarrassing, sometimes on purpose. Rin had never been in a situation so mundane as a kid as being embarrassed by her parents, but she suspected Kaiya's ability to humiliate was something akin to that. With this in mind, she sighed and walked up to her neighbor's door. Rin cast her friend a weary look to mask her discomfort before knocking and rolling her eyes the other woman's thumbs up.

When Mr. Yagi answered he eyed her with some surprise. He was wearing a very large sweatshirt that hung off his body like a crumpled tent. He also looked very tired and his smile, though not unfriendly, was nevertheless once again tinged with a hint of sadness.

"Good evening, Mis- uh…Rin," he said, catching himself. Ah yes, she had told him to call her by her first name, hadn't she…and it was still weird.

"Hey, er," it occurred to her that she hadn't thought about what she was going to say.

"Shit," she muttered, though not low enough so that he couldn't hear. He continued to watch her, now slightly concerned. When it became clear that she had already hit a snag in an attempt at basic at human interaction, Kaiya approached her from behind and smiled at him warmly, while resting her hand on Rin's shoulder.

"It's Friday night and we're headed to a nearby bar. We thought we'd invite you, you know, if you're not busy," Kaiya said.

"Oh, uh…" he blinked, looking surprised again, before this dissolved into embarrassment. "Uh, well, I appreciate the offer but…I can't really drink."

Rin looked sideways at her friend and raised her eyebrows.

"Uh, well," Kaiya continued, much less likely to get flustered then her in awkward situations, but obviously still managing to miss a few beats at this revelation. "Sorry, uh…but you could still come…if you like, you don't have to drink."

"I wouldn't want to spoil anyone's fun," he said while rubbing at the back of his neck, still smiling. At first glance it was a simple, somewhat pitiable statement. And she got the impression that he might actually believe it, but as someone who habitually avoided human contact and complex interactions, she also very clearly recognized someone who was trying to make an excuse.

"I hate bars," she said, before Kaiya could reply with something that was most likely going to be much more encouraging. "There's literally nothing you could do to make it worse." He met her gaze and Rin held it for a second before looking away with some embarrassment and shoving her hands in her pockets.

"I'm a school teacher and my husband is an accountant," Kaiya added from beside her. "We're pretty low key."

He chuckled, a pleasant, simple sound that was easy on the ears and it seemed like he was weighing his options for a moment.

"All right, let me get my coat," he said finally.

"Great, so he can't even drink," Rin said, after he retreated back into his apartment. "Not too surprising I guess…for someone who coughs up blood."

"Yeah, I admit, I feel a little bad," Kaiya said. "Wait…he coughs up blood?" she added after Rin's statement sunk in.

"Yeah…apparently enough that he doesn't seem too concerned about it."

"Coughing up blood is never a good thing, ugh, ok…kind of wished I had known that. Still, it's not like we'll be doing shots. Taro gets red in the face after a beer, so I'll probably be driving us home, and you barely drink when we go out to public places."

"Hrmm, there's a good chance that's not going to be the case tonight," Rin muttered. It was true she avoided drinking too much in bars because she didn't like the idea of being in a crowded place and not having complete control over herself, but tonight she really needed a drink.

"Oh, crap, I just thought about something," Kaiya said while giving her a somewhat apologetic look.

"What?" Rin said, while narrowing her eyes a little.

"I may have mentioned to Taro that your neighbor works for All Might."

"God, Kaiya…" It had been a minor point of contention between them that Taro was a big fan of All Might. This was not especially bizarre, given how popular the hero was, but Taro was the sort of person who enjoyed having collections and sometimes got carried away with them, so he could be a rather…enthusiastic fan.

"Well, I didn't think at the time that he would actually meet him. Don't worry, I'll try to reign him in," Kaiya added out of the corner of her mouth as Mr. Yagi resurfaced, pulling a large coat over his massive sweatshirt in the process.

XXX

It shortly became apparent to Rin that she needn't have worried about struggling through a conversation with her neighbor, as Kaiya's husband barely wasted a second introducing himself to the tall, lanky man before chattering incessantly to him on their way to the bar. And this chatter continued as they entered the small crowded building and found an empty table.

Mr. Yagi was accommodating the man with a great deal of courtesy and a lot more patience then Rin herself would have been capable of, but he did start to look uncomfortable after the first twenty minutes or so. Part of this could have just been that he didn't seem all that accustomed to his surroundings.

"So, must be exciting, do you handle his fan mail, or fill out his paperwork? I know All Might generates a lot of paperwork when it comes to city finances, although I've heard he mostly pays for any damages he causes out of his own pockets."

"Uh well, I guess I handle his personal affairs actually, pass important messages to him…and I meet with people when he's too busy to."

"Oh wow, that sounds way better!" Taro said enthusiastically. "So, you're actually his personal secretary! Holy crap…I assumed you were one of the hundreds of people employed in his headquarters. Have you met him? I mean, I imagine you would have to…probably a silly question to ask. What's he like in person?"

"Er…"

"Taro, take it down a notch, will you?" Kaiya said from beside him. "Sorry, I'm pretty sure my husband would leave me for All Might if he got the chance."

"That's not true, don't tell him that," Taro said, adding the last bit to Kaiya under his breath.

"Uh, I'm sure he would appreciate such an…enthusiastic fan," Mr. Yagi said while placing his long fingers together on the table. Some color had risen to his cheeks.

"That's one word for it," Rin muttered, before exchanging a brief frustrated look with her friend.

"Why don't you give Mr. Yagi a break and get the drinks, Taro," Kaiya said. "Do you like Kushiyaki? It's pretty good here. They have other things too, if you don't." She added, looking across the table at the tall blonde man. Rin had noticed that Kaiya had gone slightly into nurture mode since they'd left her apartment, possibly because she was now aware that she had invited a potentially very ill man to hang out with them without knowing the extent of said illness.

"Uh, Kushiyaki is fine," he said, "I mean, I don't eat much so, don't go out of your way on my account." Rin was in a position to see Kaiya's face go very carefully blank at this statement as she chose not to comment.

"Okay, get some Kushiyaki…and maybe some edamame too, and Mr. Yagi doesn't drink…I think they have a few nonalcoholic options," she added, while casting the man a brief apologetic look.

Eventually Taro headed towards the bar after both her and Kaiya decided on what they were going to drink. In his absence things became a lot quieter. Well, no, that wasn't true, there was enough noise around them that it was almost suffocating, and yet the heavy silence that fell over their table was still very much noticeable, at least for Rin.

Even Kaiya seemed to be struggling to come up with something to say, and it was not surprising, after all, Mr. Yagi was almost a complete stranger and so far the only things either one of them knew about him was that he worked for All Might; a conversation that had already been exhausted, he lived in Ikigai and he couldn't drink, which even Rin knew was a highly inappropriate thing to pry him about. Ah yes and he coughed up blood…which was an even less suitable topic of conversation.

It was relatively warm in the bar. Rin shrugged off her heavy jacket and tried not to convey the awkwardness she was feeling. Across from her, Kaiya made an effort.

"Weather has gotten a lot colder in the last couple of days," She said after a few seconds.

_Oh good, _Rin thought dismally. _Small talk. _

"Yes, it has been pretty cold," he said in response and for a moment he met Rin's gaze. There was a look of amusement in his eye. She felt a vague stirring somewhere in her stomach at the attention before distracting herself by playing with the napkin dispenser. "So, you're a teacher?" She heard him say as she started tearing a napkin into small strips.

"Oh, yes...I teach first graders," Kaiya said brightly. "I mean, it's not in the hero field, so even less exciting these days then it used to be, but I enjoy it."

"No, I think teaching is an extremely important profession," he said earnestly. "Besides, not everyone can go the hero route."

When Taro returned with the drinks, Rin took her beer from him gratefully.

"They'll bring the food out in a bit," he said cheerfully before setting…something in front of Mr. Yagi. It was big and colorful and had two large yellow things sticking out of it. On closer inspection the yellow things were clearly shaped to be two very familiar looking bangs sticking out of a pair of sharp red eyes.

"Jesus god in heaven, what is that?" Rin muttered under breath.

"It's a cocktail," Taro said as, the taller man eyed it with a strange expression on his face. Unlike his smile, this expression emphasized the harsh lines of his face.

"Taro, I said he didn't drink, not give him the biggest, fluffiest drink on the menu," Kaiya said.

"I know," Taro said defensively. "They said they can make all of the cocktails nonalcoholic. I got this one because it's All Might themed."

"It's all right," Mr. Yagi said, before anyone else could comment. "This is fine, thank you." He added, while putting his hand up and smiling again. He took a sip of the monstrosity as if to emphasize this. "Very fruity." Kaiya gave him a hesitant look before smiling a little.

Rin was halfway through her beer when their food arrived. Her neighbor practically had a chicken skewer forced on him by Kaiya, which he accepted, but did little but nibble at. He also nursed his drink like it _did_ have alcohol in it. Since they'd come in, he had gone from sitting fairly upright to slouching in a way that made him look considerably shorter then he actually was.

Meanwhile, Taro received several sharp nudges from Kaiya every time he started getting back on the subject of All Might. Mr. Yagi was still being polite, but he also was starting to look very tired. She could relate, her biggest goal tonight had been to not think about All Might and Kaiya's husband was making that pretty much impossible. Still, it was almost manageable when he was talking about stupid stuff, like his collection of All Might novelty glasses, which was groan-worthy, but not necessarily traumatizing. But when he started talking about All Might's hero work and some of the major criminals he'd taken down, she began to feel the heaviness of the room.

As he chattered excitedly Rin noticed suddenly that Mr. Yagi's attention was on her. His expression was odd, almost guilty. Regardless, it made her uncomfortable and fed into her paranoia a bit, which was not helped by the stuffiness of the bar. Normally alcohol helped with this a bit, but even after getting through most of her second drink, she found she wasn't feeling any more comfortable.

After finishing her second beer and starting on her third, Rin decided to excuse herself for a few moments. Well, perhaps excuse herself wasn't the right phrase, because that would suggest a polite word or two, perhaps a bow. She just muttered something that was barely audible and headed towards the door.

XXX

Both Kaiya and Toshinori watched her go. As Kaiya turned back to the table, she noticed that Mr. Yagi was looking slightly downcast, although maybe it was because her husband was trying to get his attention again.

"Taro, go get me another drink," she said, interrupting whatever it was he was going to say. When he was gone she cleared her throat.

"Sorry, I would have expected that he might find something else to talk about by now."

"It's all right, I'm used to it," he said. After a moment where it seemed like he was thinking about something, he rubbed the back of his neck a little. "Miss Hajime really doesn't like All Might very much, does she?"

"Oh, uh," Kaiya frowned. "I mean...I wouldn't say...if you're talking about her leaving just now...she does that," she said, apologetically. "Probably just went out to get some fresh air. She left her jacket behind, so she's probably coming back." She added, although this was mostly to herself.

"I mean...I'm almost certain she wouldn't just leave," Kaiya added after a moment, hoping that the man hadn't noticed that she didn't answer his question. "Although, come to think of it, I remember a party I threw at my first apartment. She vanished early on and didn't turn up until the next day…and that was before Taro…I mean she lived with me at the time…"

"It sounds like you've known each other for a while," he said with a pensive smile.

"Oh yeah, since Highschool. Before that, actually…but we've been friends since Highschool…er…she's…she's nicer then she seems," Kaiya said and then frowned again. That didn't sound right. "What I mean is, she's a bit standoffish, but…well, she's a good person…uh are you all right?"

He had started coughing in the middle of her explanation. He nodded as he grabbed a napkin.

_Yeah, I really should not have convinced this guy to come to a bar. _She thought.

"I'm fine," he said, his voice slightly muffled. "I think I'm going to step out for some air as well," he added as he stood and bowed a little. Kaiya noticed that as he left, he took Rin's jacket...but also left his drink.

XXX

Rin was leaning against a metal divider that separated the outdoor seating from the street. Because of the cold it was blessedly empty, the exchange being, of course that it was really cold. In all honesty, she _had_ briefly considered walking home, but ultimately decided not to, partly because she knew it would be discourteous, but mostly because she had left her keys in her jacket.

"I guess you really do hate bars."

Rin looked up as Mr. Yagi approached her, looking slightly apologetic. He extended his hand and she noted with some exasperation that he was holding her jacket. She took it with some embarrassment. This was the second time in two days that this man had technically returned her keys…and on both occasions it was after she had been trying to get away from him. Although on this occasion she had also been trying to get away from the bar and Kaiya's husband.

"Thank you," she said as she pulled it over her shoulders and zipped it up, shivering slightly. "Did Kaiya send you out, or are you just trying to get away from Taro's undying passion for All Might?"

"Ah, no, to be honest I wasn't feeling very well," he said. He had seemed tired for much of the night, but as she eyed him now, she noticed that he did look a little pale. "Anyways, I just wanted to give you your jacket, I'll get out of your hair, if you want to be alone."

"No, it's okay," Rin said, while crossing her arms awkwardly and feeling slightly guilty. There were a few moments of silence, while the noise from the bar filtered out into the dark. "Was it that horrible drink?" She asked after a moment.

"Well, the drink wasn't…great, I admit. I imagine it's probably better with alcohol in it," he added.

"No," Rin said after giving this a moment's thought. "It had molded plastic pieces in it."

"True, and I'm pretty sure some of the plastic was coming off into the drink," he said. "I may have to start screening some of this stuff," he added to himself. "If anything, it was the sugar, though…too much sugar really isn't much better for me then alcohol."

_Great, _she thought as she eyed the ground dismally. We dragged _a man who can't drink out to a bar and made him sick with a horrible All Might drink. _She suspected that despite Kaiya's encouragement, this was not the ideal way of making friends.

"Sorry," Rin said after a moment and she meant it. She was startled as he chuckled again and then watched with some concern as he pulled a napkin out of his coat pocket as this turned into a cough.

"You don't have to apologize, it's not your fault," he said as he tucked the napkin away again. Rin saw a flash of red before he did. "Besides, I don't remember the last time I went out on a Friday night. It's kind of nice."

"If it wasn't for Kaiya I probably wouldn't bother," Rin said as she took another drink of her beer. "I don't really see the appeal."

"You don't like being around lots of people?"

"I don't like being around people in general," Rin admitted. "I don't get how they can stand it," she added in a mutter, while nodding towards the bar.

"Well, I think most people are just trying to live their lives as happily as they can, but I suppose loneliness probably plays some part," Mr. Yagi said, while scratching his head.

"I think loneliness is something you stop feeling after a while," Rin said. He seemed to pause as he thought about this.

"I think it's definitely something you can adapt to," he said finally. "But I don't think you ever stop feeling it."

A few things occurred to her. The first was that his statement was most likely an accurate one. She only had to look at her own friendship with Kaiya for proof of that. She'd been completely alone for years and it had been fine, until suddenly she had had a friend and had realize maybe it hadn't been. The second was that he may have been speaking from personal experience as his words didn't seem to be specifically directed at her and the third was that this was the opposite of small talk. Too personal. Time to change the subject.

"Er, oh…uh thanks for the movies," she said shyly.

"You're welcome, keep them as long as you like," he said. "I included some from other directors, feel free to skip them if they don't interest you."

Rin gave him a weak smile which he returned, and his was a good deal more pleasant than hers, before another silence fell over them and once again the only sound was the muted noises coming from the bar and the low whistle of the autumn wind.

Rin looked sideways at the man beside her and found that his attention was elsewhere. After a moment when it became apparent that conversation was no longer required of her, she leaned back against the metal divider again, somewhat surprised to be enjoying a moment of comfortable silence with someone else present.


	6. An Awkward Night Concludes Awkwardly

Kaiya tapped her fingers on the table. It had been about ten minutes since Mr. Yagi left. That was either a good sign, or a very bad sign. She eyed the ridiculous All Might drink with the mostly still intact Kushiyaki lying beside it and felt a twinge of guilt.

Kaiya was naturally friendly because of her quirk…it was difficult not to be when walking in someone else's shoes was as easy as a tap on the shoulder. As much as Rin complained when she used her quirk on her, they both knew that if she didn't have it, they probably would have never become friends in the first place.

Still, emotions were complicated. In order to really understand how a person felt, some context was needed, otherwise a lot was left to interpretation. She had read Mr. Yagi briefly when he first introduced himself and he had felt…normal…as normal as anyone could feel, if not a bit sad. He wasn't wracked with misery or grief, it was more like an underlying sadness like a grey sky in the fall. She always felt guilty about reading people she didn't know without their knowledge of it…it was sort of an invasion of their privacy. So, she wasn't especially proud of the fact that she had read him again while she had passed him the skewer. She hadn't been planning on it…her ability was second nature at this point, so she could easily just turn it on and off at will and she'd just flipped the switch on without thinking about it, perhaps in a subconscious desire to see how the evening was going.

The sadness had been vague, almost easy to miss, but the way he had been feeling when she read him this time was pretty much like getting punched in the face. Sadness, frustration, discomfort, shame…all carefully concealed by his polite disposition.

"That drink looks like a health hazard…didn't they have soda water, or something?" She said with a sigh.

"I don't think it looks that bad," Taro said as he eyed the drink and then pulled it towards him. Kaiya eyed him with some exasperation as he took a sip. "Wow, it's really sweet."

"Don't just drink from other people's glasses! What is wrong with you tonight?" Kaiya said.

"Sorry, he's been gone for a while, I figured he wasn't going to finish it."

"Still," Kaiya started. "For your sake I hope whatever he has isn't contagious," she added in a mutter.

"Oh…you think he's sick?"

Instead of answering him, she stood and moved around the table, apologizing to the people sitting at the table beside them as she squeezed past their chairs and headed towards the door into the bar. Knowing Rin, she may have just left…even without her jacket. If that was the case, then it would probably be best to find Mr. Yagi and offer him a ride home.

She hesitated in the doorway. The outside of the bar had a sitting area that was quite popular during warmer months. Soon, the chairs and tables would probably be packed up for the winter, but for now, it was still open and was lit faintly with torches for those few uncharacteristically warm fall evenings still remaining. In the glow of one of the torches she could see that Rin and Mr. Yagi were both standing at the edge of the seating area. They didn't seem to be talking, but as far as she could see in the faint light, her friend didn't appear to be showing any of her usual signs of discomfort…and she hadn't made a run for it yet…and for Rin that was a positive.

Kaiya backed away from the door and headed back towards the table where her husband was waiting.

XXX

Toshinori shifted his weight a little as a cold breeze rustled his coat and leaned back against the partition with his eyes closed. He hadn't been lying when he'd said he wasn't feeling well. Whatever good feelings he'd had upon waking had vanished throughout the day, starting with his unsettling interaction with Ryo Kawaguchi and just getting worse as the day went on. The drink hadn't helped. It had way too much sugar and was causing his insides to churn. In retrospect he should have just politely declined the cocktail, but he hadn't wanted to be rude…well no, that may have been part of it, but it wasn't exactly the reason.

The woman, Kaiya seemed nice, but as the night went on, he had felt things crystallizing around him a bit. The concerned glances, the very careful way of speaking, the painfully obvious attempts to not bring attention to the fact that with him there, despite their insistence otherwise, the atmosphere was one of discomfort. Being like this around people was always a little bit of a struggle for him. He constantly had to fight with his desire to not be a burden, as well as his shame and distaste at being…exposed and right now that meant he was dealing with the nausea of attempting to drink more sugar in a night then he had probably consumed in the last month. Getting out of the stuffy bar had helped a little though. Now he was just trying not to breath too heavily to keep the cold from irritating his cough.

He opened his eyes a little and cast a surreptitious look at his neighbor…Miss Hajime…Rin. After the disastrous interaction with her in his hero form, Toshinori had returned home in a fowl temper with himself. He had known, KNOWN that interfering was a bad idea, but he'd attempted it anyway. Why? Because he just couldn't help himself dammit. He should have been focused on the attacks in Minato, but that impulse to help in any situation, regardless of how big or small was something he just wasn't able to shake, even now when his time was so restricted due to his injury. And it hadn't even done any good, if anything he just made things worse.

He had just about decided to let it go, for real this time when he had received the invite from her…or her friend…it was a bit unclear as to whether she even wanted him here. All Might received invitations and propositions on almost a daily basis and for the most part turned them down as gracefully as possible. Yagi, on the other hand pretty much never did. And that part of him that still wanted to make things better, because he never learned his lesson apparently had won out over his better judgement.

She seemed to be deep in thought with her arms crossed tightly against her coat. Beside her, a torch was burning. It had been blazing a second before, now it was dying. There was a light breeze, but it didn't look like it was being snuffed out by the wind…and these were the sort of torches that were fed by oil as well. Toshinori looked from the torch back to her.

Despite looking at quite a few articles about her father, he had tried not to delve too much into her…not that the newspapers had gone into too much detail about Rin personally, outside of mentioning her in relation to her father's capture, but even looking at what little there had been felt…intrusive. That cop the other day had said she was on a watch list. People were often put on those lists if they had a criminal record, but there were several reasons someone might be added. Abuse of a quirk or using a quirk in specific ways without a license could do it, especially if the quirk in question was especially strong or dangerous, having criminal ties, however flimsy, or being related or close to a known criminal sometimes was taken into consideration as well, so it wasn't a leap in logic to think that she might have been added in part because of her father…

_'Especially if she inherited his quirk,' _he thought to himself as he watched the torch slowly peter out as if…well as if it were being deprived of oxygen. He wondered vaguely if she knew she was doing it.

XXX

Rin had almost emptied her beer. She was feeling a bit more relaxed, so either the alcohol was finally working, or she was winding down after being outside and away from the crowded bar.

Now she was staring into the small flame of one of the big oil torches lighting the outdoor seating area and was trying to think of something to say to her neighbor. The silence was nice, but a comfortable silence could quickly become an uncomfortable silence if left for too long. Besides, it would be nice to come off as at least somewhat normal in front of him…for once…ever. Rin scowled a little. It annoyed her that she was so inept at something that other people found so simple.

With Kaiya it was easy. She could just be herself. Not that it had always been that way. Toward the beginning…well…sometimes she was amazed that their friendship had survived long enough to get past those painfully awkward early days.

She was broken out of her thoughts when she realized with some dismay that the torch in front of her was almost out.

_Shit._

She hadn't even realized she'd been holding her breath. Habit…an old habit. Something she hadn't done in years…probably not since she was still in school even. This was why she didn't like to drink too much in public…she got too comfortable and she would do things like this unconsciously in the same way some people twirled their hair or bit their nails. Rin inhaled slowly, and the dying flame began to crackle again. She met her neighbor's eyes when she turned back towards him and felt a brief jolt of panic before the man smiled at her a little guiltily. Maybe he hadn't noticed.

"Er," Rin started. She hadn't thought of anything to talk about. Fortunately, she was saved the trouble…by…as it were, the worst ringtone she had ever heard.

_'A PHONE CALL IS HERE, A PHONE CALL IS HERE!'_

Rin was able to see her neighbor's expression as it shifted from tired amicability to embarrassed horror when the ringtone blasted from one of his over-sized coat pockets. He started to scramble at his coat, color rising to his cheeks.

XXX

Toshinori got very few phone calls, mostly because he didn't give his personal number out to anyone apart from the people he considered to be close friends. The possibility of getting a phone call now, at this time, around this woman, with his damn ringtone hadn't even occurred to him. If it had, he would have muted it. When he pulled the phone out, he cancelled the call out of panic, and then frowned when he saw that it had been from Tsukaiuchi.

Rin's expression was something akin to exasperation in the silence that followed. He coughed a little, in part to hide his embarrassment and in part because surprise tended to exacerbate his propensity to spew blood. He managed to avoid that at least.

"Agh…sorry," he said after a moment, feeling the heat in his face. "…I should take this actually."

"Okay…" she said after a second, her face settling into a weary expression. He wouldn't be surprised if she went back to dodging him after tonight. "My drinks gone…I'll probably just…head back inside."

Toshinori sighed after she disappeared back into the bar, before raising his phone and pressing the button to call back Naomasa. The other man answered quickly.

"Sorry about that, didn't mean to cut off your call," he said while rubbing at his sunken eyes.

"It's all right. Listen, All Might I uh…how soon can you meet with me? There have been some developments." There was a slight edge in Naomasa's voice that made Toshinori hesitate for a moment. The man sounded tired, which was understandable, but also strange…distressed.

"At the most? Five minutes maybe," he said. Really it depended on where Tsukauichi was. If he activated his quirk he could be anywhere in the city in less than that. "Is something wrong?"

Tsukauichi sighed in response.

"Ryo Kawaguchi is dead," he said before another pause. "This isn't something I want to explain on the phone. I'm just now getting off work. I can be at your apartment in about fifteen minutes."

"All right…I'll be there," Toshinori said, feeling his insides turn unpleasantly in a way that had nothing to do with the overabundance of sugar in his system.

After he hung up, he frowned, his shoulders slumping. After a moment, he put his phone away and headed towards the bar. If it weren't for the subject of Naomasa's visit, he might have been glad for the excuse to escape. Still, despite how tired and nauseous he was and even though a 'Friday night out' was now the furthest thing from his mind, with his quirk activated he could be back to his apartment long before Tsukaiuchi arrived. There was no need to rush off without at least saying something first.

As he headed back into the stuffiness of the bar, he shoved his hands in his pockets and attempted to put on expression that didn't convey his actual mood.

"Mr Yagi," Kaiya started while smiling, a hint of concern in her voice. "Are you feeling better?"

"Ah…yes thank you…unfortunately I just got an urgent call and I have to get going," he said while bowing a little. He met Rin's eyes briefly as he straightened.

"Oh…I hope everything's all right…I can give you a ride back…"

"No please," he said quickly, while putting his hands up and smiling a little. "I don't want to interrupt the rest of your night. I'll take the bus back."

"The bus stop is a block away, it's no trouble…"

"No, I would…really I'd rather take the bus. Thank you again for inviting me out," he said, attempting to cut off any further argument on the matter. The concern in the woman's face deepened and it looked like she wanted to say something else, but Toshinori was already heading out the door.

XXX

Naomasa arrived at All Might's apartment later then he planned. It took longer than expected to wrap up everything before he was able to leave work. All Might answered the door shortly after he knocked and smiled at him wearily. Normally the hero was a head taller than him, but he often employed poor posture in his weaker form. Anyone who saw him in this state would probably find it hard to believe that this man was the same man who, twelve hours earlier, plucked someone out of the sky without breaking a sweat. Sometimes even Naomasa found himself splitting Yagi and All Might up as separate people in his head.

"You look as terrible as I feel," Naomasa said, not unkindly as All Might let him in.

"Yes well, I just came from a bar and the food and drink did not agree with me," the older man responded before heading into the kitchen. "Please have a seat."

"I didn't think you drank," Naomasa said while removing his coat and sitting on the couch in All Might's sparse living room.

"I don't, my neighbor and her friend invited me," he replied from the other room. There was the sound of running water as he filled a kettle.

Naomasa was vaguely surprised. As far as he understood, All Might didn't make friends outside of those intrinsically tied to his hero career. Even _his _friendship with All Might often revolved around work. The image of the man going out to a bar on a Friday night, even under the guise of All Might's secretary was an odd one. Actually, when it came down to it, it was almost stranger to think of Yagi going out on a Friday night.

"Forgive me for saying so but the bar scene doesn't seem like something you would have a knack for," Naomasa said as All Might resurfaced from the kitchen.

"No…I suppose not…I felt a little out of place," he responded, standing in the doorway. He rubbed the back of his head with some embarrassment. "It probably didn't help that I was at least a decade older than everyone else there."

"And that you don't drink," Naomasa added with some amusement. "Why did you go?"

"It's…not important. Anyway, I doubt I'll be invited out again." His weary smile fell and was replaced by something far more somber, casting shadows across his sharp features. "What happened to Kawaguchi?"

Tsukauichi's own amusement drained as the image of Yagi in a bar was replaced by the events of the last few hours and he sighed heavily.

XXX

Rin stared gloomily at her fifth beer of the evening, while pointedly ignoring the occasional glances from her friend. She found it easy to be angry usually, but often had a hard time staying angry at Kaiya. Right now, however she had decided to be immature and that meant that she wanted Kaiya to know that she was angry at her and that she wasn't giving the woman a chance to abate that anger. She also was starting to get slightly drunk, which wasn't helping to increase her capacity for reasonable behavior.

Meanwhile Kaiya's husband was still blissfully talking, unaware of this.

"Taro, why don't you get the car started?" Kaiya said wearily, clearly growing tired of the juvenile highschool level tension she was perpetuating after having to endure it since Mr. Yagi had left nearly an hour before. Once Taro was gone, a brief silence fell before Kaiya interrupted it.

"I know tonight wound up being kind of awkward," she said. Rin continued to stare at the table. "Rin both of us know that the silent treatment is immature and unsustainable." Silence. "I really don't think it went as badly as you think…I mean, it could have gone a lot worse."

Finally, Rin raised her head and gave Kaiya a _look_.

"All right," Kaiya conceded, looking slightly miserable. "Maybe not _a lot_ worse…short of like…a fire or meteor strike. Do you think he really had an urgent call or was that an excuse?"

Kaiya looked dismal enough so that Rin relented a little. She sighed and rested her arms on the table.

"If he was really in a hurry, he wouldn't have decided to walk to the bus station," Rin said. He _had_ received a phone call, maybe even an important one, but his hasty retreat in the bar had been odd and evasive.

"Yeah…I kind of figured. I don't know him any better than you do, how was I supposed to know he would feel so uncomfortable?"

"You literally…have superpowers…that do that," Rin said.

"Only if I touch someone…you wanted me to touch Mr. Yagi all evening?"

After a moment Rin snorted. Kaiya eyed her with some exasperation as this turned into laughter. Yeah, she was definitely entering the realm of drunk.

"All right, that sounded weird," Kaiya conceded. "I'm sorry I convinced you to invite him, ok? Usually you don't like people and you seem to actually kind of like him. Or at least you don't seem to actively dislike him. I was trying to help."

Rin's laughter subsided.

"I know," she said with a sigh.

XXX

"He died in the hospital. I don't have as much information as I'd like, but I was told that when he arrived, he was in critical condition. Multiple organs were in distress, and while they were trying to stabilize him, he went into cardiac arrest," Naomasa shook his head. "We'll know more after an autopsy is done, but it sounds like his insides just…stopped functioning properly."

All Might was silent, staring gloomily at the floor. Behind him there was a hiss as the water in his kettle boiled. He broke away from the doorway and headed towards it.

"I don't want to imagine a quirk that could do this…but…his behavior on the rooftop was unnatural," All Might muttered as turned off the stove and headed into the living room. "Tea?" he added.

"I'd ask you for something stronger, but I know you probably don't have anything," Naomasa replied while rubbing at his forehead.

"Sadly not," he said as he set the tray with his tea pot and cups down. "Believe me, it's hard not to be tempted sometimes."

"Tea will be fine," Naomasa said with the hint of a smile. He sat back on All Might's couch as the man poured the tea and accepted the proffered cup gratefully. In his hero form, All Might was always full of energy, loud and cheerful and it made sense for what he was trying to achieve…what he had achieved as the symbol of peace. His overblown cheerful persona put people at ease, but Naomasa found that in his own way Yagi's presence outside of his hero form could also be very relaxing. There was something inherently comfortable about him.

"We also found something in the evidence we collected…from both the park and the station," Naomasa said after taking a sip of his tea. It was somewhat flowery and tasted good, even if it didn't contain anything stronger. "Those masks, there are traces of dna on the inside, dried blood."

All Might had picked up his tea and was holding it up near his face, seemingly enjoying it for the warmth or the fragrance or perhaps just waiting for it to cool.

"From the victims?"

"No, It's all from one person. After finding it on one mask, I ordered them to check the rest. We haven't had time to test the mask Kawaguchi was wearing, but I'm sure it'd be the same. Obviously, we couldn't question the conductors, and the people at the park…only a few of them were wearing them. One woman said that she felt strange…uncomfortable, but couldn't describe exactly what it felt like." Naomasa said as he set his tea down and rested his elbows on his knees. "Sorry, I feel like I'm rambling. I've been up for over 24 hours."

"No need to apologize," All Might said, before finally taking a sip of his tea. "You think the blood belongs to whoever is behind this?"

"Yes," Naomasa said. "I think…it has something to do with his quirk…I think he was controlling that man who was operating the train and I think he made Kawaguchi jump off of the roof."

"Mind control," All Might said, looking troubled.

"I don't think it is exactly. They're rare, but we've seen brainwashing and mind control quirks before…generally they rely on persuasion or activate some sort of signal in another person's brain. Whatever his quirk is, it seems to hurt the people he uses it on. If it's passed on through blood…it might be more like…an infection…or parasite."

"Kawaguchi was visibly distressed. He looked terrified," the older man seemed to be staring at nothing for a moment, his troubled expression deepening. "I guess saving him didn't spare him any pain."

Naomasa straightened and, deciding to take a page out of All Might's book, gave his friend an encouraging smile.

"It's not your fault, you did everything you could," he said, clapping his hand down on All Might's shoulder before picking up his tea again. "You should be careful though. That's the main reason I wanted to tell you all of this now, instead of waiting until I had more information. If his quirk controls people…that's something even you might have some trouble against…especially considering the amount of damage it seems to do to people…with your injury…"

"Right, thanks for the warning," All Might said wearily.


	7. That Saying About The Tiger

Chapter Seven:

That Saying About The Tiger

Rin had been relieved when her Friday night concluded, but as much as she hated crowds and despite her attempts to bail out of the evening entirely, she dreaded what would almost certainly be a fitful night of sleep almost as much as she longed for it.

As soon as she had returned home, she shed her jacket and shoes and went into the bedroom, not even attempting to change out of her clothing before crawling into bed. In her mind, any task, regardless of how small could invite thought and thinking could chase away the weariness that had set in thanks to what had been admittedly too much beer. With any luck she'd sleep through till the morning.

The only thing she did stop to do was to turn on the various cacophony of noises she employed to help sleep along. This included a fan, which was getting less and less sensible as the cold was setting in and her television which was always changed to as mundane a channel as possible and turned down low enough so that she could hear the sound without actually being able to make out the words. During the warmer months she'd also open the window, but it was far too cold this evening.

It might have worked, had she not caught a glimpse of the tv as she was rolling over on her side. It was tuned into a channel that played bad soap operas and a global shopping show that generally ran for hours at a time. It was this that was currently on. Generally, it didn't threaten to hold her interest. At worse it was groan-worthy or very dull. The item currently on display, however, was a set of collectible glasses showing the symbol of peace in his early days. On another night Rin might have rolled her eyes and gone to sleep, but tonight she just stared. Through her half drunken stupor, she cursed at the shopping network for deliberately deciding to sell this specific item at the specific moment she was trying to get to sleep. It almost seemed…unfair.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling and because there was no helping it, her mind began to wander. And once she started to think about one thing, everything else started a queue for attention; her encounter with All Might, her night at the bar and her interactions with Mr. Yagi, which inevitably led to her reanalyzing every other unfortunate interaction she'd had with him, Kaiya's ill spent efforts to mold her into a proper human, absently using her powers at the bar…every time she exhausted a thought, another followed. This continued until a faint light began to show on the horizon as the morning crept in, unsympathetic to her persistent restlessness.

Eventually she came back to _the_ thought though. The thing that crept underneath all of those other thoughts and would re-emerge no matter how much she tried to ignore it, to drown it out, to push it down and with it the fear and the anger that it brought.

_You aren't normal. There's something wrong with you. You aren't a good person._

The first time that thought had crept up on her had been when she was still very young and as much as it had upset her then, it made sense. Normal people didn't have trouble with basic niceties. Normal people weren't angry all the time. Normal people didn't hate All Might. All Might was the standard for good and peace and justice. And as much as she hated him, hated his big fake smile and his stupid hair and the easy confidence he employed as he continued to be fucking perfect, she knew that one of the reasons she hated him so much was that cold fear that if she came face to face with him, he would see something in her that so many other people throughout her life had seemed to see.

_You are not a good person._

XXX

Toshinori made regular appearances at his headquarters prior to his injury. Even then he was a lot harder to track down then the average hero, given that his pro-activity often saw him busy with some criminal or natural disaster. He was even more elusive now, but he still tried to stop by as often as possible, although these days he was probably there more as Yagi Toshinori then he was as All Might. As his own secretary, he spent more time with the less glamorous work involved with being a pro hero, though Tsukauichi would waste no opportunity to point out that he was still lousy with paperwork.

All Might had an office in the giant building and kept it stocked with a variety of things that could both be of great help to him in an emergency and would also not attract the attention of any of his employees or the reporters who occasionally got past his employees. For instance, he'd keep a basic first aid kit, but would never keep any of his prescriptions there. He kept several changes of clothing, but no personal items and perhaps most importantly, he'd carefully worked for months to ensure that most of the floor his office was on was empty or so near to it that it didn't make much of a difference so that he could avoid attention if he had to.

Despite his attempts to make the building as accessible to him as possible in his hero form and his weak form, it was near impossible to avoid the press, as there was almost always a crowd around the entrance. Well…it was impossible for All Might anyways, one of the few benefits of being Yagi was that he didn't attract nearly as much attention. As All Might, however he didn't even bother to be discreet. He had always tried to be as accommodating as possible when it came to the press, while also in the knowledge that if he did need to get away from them, he could easily do so.

Today he really wasn't in the mood to answer questions. He knew they would most likely revolve around the events of the last week, but he also knew that it was his job as the symbol of peace to put people at ease, even if he was feeling uneasy himself…especially if he was feeling uneasy. He masked those feelings with a bright smile as the reporters swarmed him eagerly and his smile barely faltered as he was suddenly bombarded with several questions at once as multiple journalists attempted to talk over each other.

"All Might, what do you think of the recent attacks on the city?"

"What's your response to people saying that this city's decade of peace is at an end?"

"Do you think these attacks are the beginning of a new influx of villainy?"

"Do the police think all of these attacks are connected?"

"I heard a rumor that this is a government conspiracy-"

"Fear not!" All Might said loudly, his booming voice managing to carry over the clamor and his smile shining brilliantly. "I assure you that any attack in this city or outside of it will not go unthwarted! The police are working tirelessly to investigate, and I will offer my full support and devote my time to preserving peace of mind! Everything will be all right."

A lot of people disliked reporters and not without reason, but while they could occasionally be unsympathetic or cutthroat, they were still people. And most people just wanted to believe that things were going to be ok, that their lives would go on normally…that tomorrow would just be another day and he would fight to his last breath to preserve that belief. He thought briefly of his conversation with Miss Hajime the night before. He'd said that most people were just trying to live as happily as they could. He had meant that wholeheartedly. Toshinori knew that as All Might, he was bluffing, especially now, he was bluffing. It was almost a trick and not just for them, but for him as well. If he had to bluff, he would bluff with every bit of his heart and soul and risk all of it to turn that bluff into reality.

Even though it probably didn't make for interesting news, a couple of the reporters seemed satisfied, almost relieved with his optimistic answer. Of course, that didn't mean everyone fell under that category.

"All Might, there's news that Ryo Kawaguchi of Kawaguchi energy passed away last night in the hospital after having a run in with you," one reporter started, a hungry sparkle in his eyes. "There's a rumor going around that he was involved in these terrorist attacks. Are these accounts accurate?"

Surprisingly, there weren't a lot of journalists who tried to slander him or expose some hidden dark secret these days, but the press was the press, ever the predator attempting to find that tasty scrap of information that would put them ahead of everyone else. It didn't matter, he was so good at acting at this point that it came as naturally to him as breathing…well maybe breathing didn't come so naturally to him anymore. Regardless, instead of reacting he dropped his smile to an expression he deemed respectable in the circumstances and altered his cheerful tone to one that was somber but confident.

"I was very sorry to hear of Mr. Kawaguchi's passing," he said, and this at least required no acting. "But as far as I know, his involvement in the attacks is not something that has been proven either way. I have the utmost confidence in the talent of the officers assigned to this case," he continued and perhaps his mood did bleed in to his persona a little more than usual, otherwise he might not have felt compelled to add; "-as well at the integrity of you fine journalists, who I'm certain will show respect and compassion while reporting on this tragedy."

Shortly after and much to his relief, the questions began to devolve into far less severe topics. After a couple of the reporters began getting into more familiar questions about his personal life (which was nonexistent) he was able to break away with rich laughter and his much-practiced non-answers before retreating to his office. Once there he released his hero form and sighed heavily. He already had a headache and it was barely nine in the morning. He gathered up a bundle of clothing which included a tie, button up and dress pants and pulled it over his now billowing hero suit, careful to hide every hint of the colorful uniform beneath the loose-fitting work clothes.

After looking over a few reports that had been left for him, Toshinori took the elevator down to the café and ordered a decaf tea as he sat by the window and eyed the street below, mulling over everything he talked about with Tsukauichi the night before. Usually, he liked this spot, but today he found it hard to sit still. Maybe it was frustration…or maybe he had just never gotten the hang of relaxing. Regardless, he abandoned the spot and headed down to the street after about five minutes. He trusted Tsukauichi, and knew that the man was far more adept at investigation then he was, but it didn't hurt to patrol near a couple of the places that had been attacked in the last week, even if it just wound up being a really long walk, at the very least he would be able to work off some of his nervous energy.

XXX

Seethe was trying to remember the saying about the tiger as he pulled up various images of building plans on his computer. At least the surroundings were better…well marginally better anyways. They were in a bar in the same corner of town that they had met a couple of days prior. He was a little nervous about being in public, but it was clear that this was not a place for the average citizen. This was the sort of bar that could accurately be called a 'dive.' He had already seen at least two drug deals being made in the time he had been there as well as what he suspected might be illegal gambling over some sort of dog fight…but apparently with raccoons and street cats in one of the nearby side alleys. Besides, this new plan was mad…no one in their right mind would suspect someone of conceiving it.

"What's that old saying about the tiger?" he said to the woman across from him. She had also been at the meeting a couple days prior and had introduced herself as Petra…which was most certainly not her real name. She looked a little out of place in the bar. Her clothes were clean and expensive looking, and she finished the ensemble with a pair of cotton gloves. However, if she felt out of place, it didn't show. As soon as they had entered, she ordered a drink and made herself comfortable.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said, not looking up from her own work.

"It's an old saying…about grabbing a tiger by the tail…like if you're already grabbing it…don't let go? Or maybe it was about riding a tiger?"

"It's both actually…sorry, did I startle you?" Seethe jumped as the man he had been internally referring to as the masked man seemed to materialize out of nowhere. He was not, in fact wearing his mask now, as it would most likely draw unwanted attention even at a seedy bar and he had told them previously to call him Kage, also most certainly not a real name...but Seethe couldn't reprogram his brain out of thinking of him as the 'masked man.'

"Agh! No, no I just…uh what?" He found it slightly irksome that Petra did not seem to be nearly as startled by the man's sudden appearance as he was.

"'To ride a tiger and not being able to get off' is an old Chinese idiom. 'To grab a tiger by the tail,' is an English saying…both essentially mean that you've found yourself in a difficult position," Kage paused for a moment, as if considering this. "I do hope you're not feeling overwhelmed, Seethe."

"No…" Seethe said quickly, before continuing in a lower voice. "I mean…well…I guess…some people might say that um attacking Mi-uh this specific place…" he corrected himself and cast a quick look around the bar to ensure no one was listening in. After a moment he continued in a lower voice. "Uh…some might say it's a little risky…insane even." He was stumbling over his words slightly as he tried to arrange them in a way that would accurately voice his concerns while also not stepping on the toes of the masked man...Kage...whatever. He didn't want to wind up like Kawaguchi.

"Risk is a part of what we are…you want us to skulk around like ordinary criminals?" Kage said after a moment of consideration.

Seethe frowned. He wasn't especially ambitious…not on this scale anyways, not to the degree this man was. This man had ideals…and ideals got you killed. He would have happily referred to himself as an ordinary criminal if it meant staying alive.

"I mean…there's not many of us…why attempt something like this now…you know…the police are looking into the other attacks…and after Kawaguchi…how do we know he didn't say something before..."

"Kawaguchi said nothing," Kage said before sitting down at their table. "And the reason we're doing this now is that I _want_ the police to notice…I want the city to notice," the man slid Seethe's computer towards him slightly and pulled up one of the images. "You don't even have to do much damage. I just need you to make a lot of noise…start a few fires…if you like I'll get you some explosives that you can activate remotely if you're that concerned about your ability to remain unnoticed."

"If we're not trying to do damage…then what's the point?"

"Miss Petra's job is to do damage…your job is to divert attention away from her," the man in the mask touched his shoulder and he did his best not to recoil reflexively. "It only becomes dangerous to us if we fail. So, don't fail. Personally, I was always partial to the _Japanese_ saying; 'When poisoned, one might as well swallow the plate.'"

XXX

It was much warmer then it had been the previous day, which made it all the more surprising that there didn't seem to be many crimes going on in the city. By 10 am, Toshinori had only transformed once, not counting the stop at his headquarters and that was just to stop a purse snatcher. He passed Kawaguchi energy briefly, but the building was still closed and being examined by the police. Ultimately, he wound up at Shizuka park since it was close to his apartment. He walked along the park trail for an hour or so, stopping briefly at the stone statue of his hero persona and eyeing it and the still visible but faded Kanji script before moving on. Eventually he stopped at a park bench.

Shinagawa Station made sense. Whoever was behind the attacks clearly wanted attention and it was a busy location. This park was a stranger choice. It was out of the way and much quieter then some of the bigger parks deeper in the city. Tsukauichi believed that Kawaguchi had been involved…at least with the Shinagawa attack, but if that was true something clearly went wrong. And once again, whoever he had been working with or for was clearly not concerned about being subtle or disposing of Kawaguchi quietly…instead having the man walk off the rooftop of his own office building. Even if All Might hadn't gotten involved and stopped the man from jumping to his death, the mask would have tied him to the other attacks.

Life, death…weakness…death written on his statue and on the masks of the victims of the park, life on the dead conductors, weakness on the mask Kawaguchi was wearing. Tsukauichi was better at this stuff then he was…to him it was all nonsense. Toshinori rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed at his forehead with a sigh.

XXX

Rin was in a bad mood. She probably would have been in a bad mood anyways, given much of the previous day, but right now she was in a bad mood because she was at work on a Saturday after drinking heavily the night before and she was doing something that was not her job.

Earlier in the morning she had gotten a call from her boss asking her to take down the decorations from Respect for the Aged Day and replace all the event signs. She was the groundskeeper…she didn't decorate. The park had other people for that…and apparently the person who was supposed to be doing it had refused to enter the park after it was attacked. Now she was here on her day off, lugging around a bunch of stuff that had been dropped off near the west exit several days ago and had miraculously not been stolen, but had been rained on and blown about enough so that it had taken several minutes to collect everything. The people who decorated the park probably had some method of transferring it, but she had just grabbed it and was now pausing to curse every time one of the signs she was carrying slid out of her hands. It certainly didn't help that she had never fully gotten to sleep, only managing to doze off for a bit before the call from her boss.

Rin tried to be professional when she was working. Fortunately, her job required very little human contact, so professionalism generally just meant not glaring at park goers. Today, her capacity for doing even that was low and she'd already gotten several looks from people every time she lost hold of one of the materials she was carrying and followed it with a string of obscenities.

After the fifth such time this happened, she stopped to take a breather and readjust the bundle of awkwardly shaped items, picking up the few that had fallen to the ground again. Normally she might try to go to the shed and grab the wheelbarrow, but it had been damaged during the previous summer and given the size and budget of the park, her boss was waiting to replace it until early spring when it would be needed again.

As she rose from her brief rest, she saw her neighbor sitting on a bench a little way down the path. It was kind of hard not to see him with his shock of yellow hair and tall lanky body. It didn't appear as if he'd noticed her yet, as he seemed to be staring fixedly at the ground.

She wondered if she could continue to go unnoticed if she took the longer path to her destination that looped behind the trees, while also battling with a strange and somewhat foreign impulse to approach the man. Both thoughts flickered through her mind simultaneously and seemed to stem from how frustrated she still was about the night before. The fact that they fundamentally opposed one another was irksome.

It was also possible that he didn't want to be bothered. He seemed preoccupied. Actually, he seemed miserable, but that wasn't really her problem. She frowned a little. Even if she did approach him, she'd probably just fuck it up. If there was one thing she was sure she was a complete failure at, it was cheering people up. Mr. Yagi was friendly, abnormally friendly…but there had to be a limit to that and after putting him in an uncomfortable situation the night before, bothering him now wouldn't do much to abate the painful awkwardness that seemed to permeate every encounter with him.

Her brief internal struggle was put to an end as she noticed a couple of younger girls coming down the path, interrupting her thoughts as they chattered and giggled in the infuriating manner of all teenage girls everywhere. She frowned as she realized that she had been standing there for close to a minute and that if Mr. Yagi did happen to look up and see her staring at him it would put her in yet another difficult position that she was in no way equipped to talk herself out of.

Right, she would just keep walking and pretend she hadn't seen him. Probably for the best. She paused again as she saw the two girls slow down a bit as they reached the bench and their conversation became slightly quieter though not nearly quiet enough to not be discernible before they stopped altogether. One of the girls broke away from her friend after fishing something out of her pocket before half handing, half throwing a couple coins at the poor man. He was visibly taken aback as the girl rushed back to her friend and they continued to walk down the path. As they passed her, she was able to catch a few fragments of their conversation.

"-nice of you…I was a little creeped out with him sitting there."

"-looks like a skeleton-"

XXX

Toshinori was aware of how pitiful he looked in this form. At best, he looked like he was merely ill. Throwing money at him seemed like a bit much though. He bent down to fish one of the coins off the ground and wondered if it would be kinder to return the money, or let the situation be.

"I would have told them to fuck off," Toshinori looked up, slightly startled. Rin was standing on the path, loaded down with a handful of park materials…actually, it looked like two handfuls. Unlike the previous times when he'd seen her in his hero form, she wasn't wearing any kind of park uniform, instead opting for loose-fitting high waisted pants and a large sweater that was over-sized in a way that was completely different from how his clothes were over-sized, in that it looked like it was on purpose.

He practically jumped up from his seat and bit back the automatic apology that bubbled up to the surface out of habit.

"Ah, Miss Hajime…Rin, good morning!" he said with a slight bow. For some reason it hadn't occurred to him that he might run into her, even though he knew that she worked in the park…or All Might knew. Maybe it was because it was Saturday, or he'd made an assumption about the outing at the bar the night before. Then again, as a pro hero he didn't partake in the archetype of 'Friday Night' or 'Saturday Morning' and it had been a long time since he'd had any kind of social life, so perhaps it was best not to assume anything.

"Er, good morning," she said after a moment, uncertainty settling on her face. "Shit," she added as one of the signs she was holding slipped out of her fingers.

Toshinori automatically scooped it up before feeling an absurd twinge of guilt. This was mainly due to the way her expression flickered. He had seen a similar look in her eyes nearly every time he encountered her…as him anyways…her expression was more…straightforward with All Might. But with Yagi, it was almost a silent pleading to be left alone…which was puzzling given that she had been the one to initiate the conversation this time. Well, he wouldn't be him if he didn't make an effort, even if he wound up regretting it later.

"Do you need some help? It looks like you have your hands full."

"No, I mean…I have to carry this stuff to the center of the park, it's a long walk." He gave her a slightly puzzled smile and it must have occurred to her that her statement didn't make a whole lot of sense, at least when it came to discouraging help because she frowned after saying it. "It's fine…it's my job, I'll just…well it's not my job…but you don't have to, really…oh dammit"

Toshinori reached out as a couple more of the signs began to slide to the ground and steadied them.

"It's no trouble, really I could use the distraction," he added.

She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before sighing.

"Ok, yeah, thanks," she relented, allowing him to take some of the items from her. He noticed that she seemed to be careful about how many of the materials she handed him. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised. "Uh…this way." She added.

He followed her and it didn't take long for an awkward silence to fall between them. Toshinori generally didn't have much difficulty when it came to talking. He'd been on camera and in front of tough audiences more times than he could count and never faltered. Granted, being confident as the world's shining symbol of peace was usually a hell of a lot easier than being confident as the shell of a man he was now, but Rin didn't like All Might…she seemed to tolerate Yagi for some reason, so unfortunately he was stuck with Yagi and as he went over the various things he could say he found himself at a loss at how he might start a conversation.

"So…you work in the park? Do you like it?" He said finally, going for the relatively safe bet. He saw her tense slightly when he spoke before relaxing her shoulders again.

"Yeah…I guess," she said finally. And that seemed to be that. Damn.

"Must be nice spending so much time outside," he tried again. Again, she tensed, relaxed…as if preparing her body to deflect an assault.

"It's…fine…most of the time," she mumbled following her curt response once more with silence. Toshinori frowned. He decided to push a little. Perhaps unwise…especially after his encounter with her in his hero form the day before, but risks were another thing he was all too familiar with.

"Maybe a little dangerous after the attack? You're not worried about being out here by yourself?" This time when she tensed, she stayed tense and her walk slowed a little. For the first time since she begrudgingly accepted his help, she looked at him and her expression was strange…and slightly suspicious. For a second, he felt a brief tinge of panic and he tried to keep it off of his face. "Sorry! I mean, it was this park right?" he added hurriedly. After a couple of seconds, Rins expression dissolved into something less guarded, hopefully concluding that his question was one of simple concern and curiosity.

"I…haven't really thought about it," she said, looking slightly uncertain as she did. "Are you?"

"Hm?" he said, not keeping up at first.

"Worried about being here alone?"

"Ah," he said with some embarrassment. It hadn't occurred to him that from her perspective he was probably way more likely to be the victim in an attack. "Right, I suppose I should be…I guess I wasn't really thinking about it either…" She nodded vaguely and then silence once again fell between them. Toshinori sighed. Perhaps it would be best if he just stuck to silence for a while.

XXX

Rin was having an equally difficult time. She wasn't clueless enough to realize that he was just trying to disperse some of the awkwardness, maybe even because she had said she hated awkward silences. And of course, she was fucking it up. She couldn't think of anything to say past her short succinct responses. Talking about work wouldn't be interesting…there was nothing much to say and her job was probably far less eventful then his. She doubted he'd be interested in a conversation about raking leaves or planting flowers…or picking up garbage. As for the attack, she didn't particularly want to talk about that…for a variety of reasons.

Maybe what she really didn't want to talk about was her. The problem…the real problem was that Kaiya had been right…she kind of liked Mr. Yagi…as strange and uncomfortable as their interactions had been. This came with a lot of complications though, the biggest one being that she was starting to care about what he thought about her, which meant that her attempts at normalcy would most likely become even more strained. Even worse though was the fear. Even if he was able to withstand her inept social skills, trying to become friends with Mr. Yagi meant that eventually he would find out who she was…and there was just no easy way to work 'My father is a super villain and mass murderer' into normal conversation.

So…perhaps she should try to direct the conversation towards learning about him? Rin didn't generally feel curious about people, not least because she avoided feeling anything towards people that would potentially draw them closer, but she had to admit some idle curiosity about Mr. Yagi despite her efforts to the contrary. How to start a conversation, though…that was tricky…because to her, all potential topics were rife with metaphorical land mines.

She was still mulling this over as they reached the center of the park. She eyed the decorations that were still up from Respect of the Aged Day gloomily. There were banners and stricken balloons as well as paper flowers and lanterns still hanging from the gazebos and had probably been cheerful at one point, but thanks to the rain and wind of the past week were now in shambles. She scowled a little and re-adjusted some of the materials in her arms, now easier to do because Mr. Yagi had decided to be helpful…again.

"Um, here's good," she said before setting the park materials carefully on a nearby bench.

"Seems like a lot of work," he said as he looked around.

"Yeah well...the park usually has other people for it...I'm not even supposed to be working today," she muttered with a hint of bitterness.

"Well, if you want a hand...I have a couple hours..."

"Er...you don't have to do that," Rin said quickly. " I mean thanks for the help...carrying that stuff but...I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to ask park visitors to do my job for me."

"Well, I wouldn't want to get you into trouble," he said with perhaps a hint of disappointment in his voice. She met his sad blue eyes and tried to ignore the slight twist to her insides. After a moment of internal turmoil she made a split decision that she hoped she wouldn't regret later.

"Fuck it, it's not really my job anyways, stay if you want," she mumbled while quickly turning away and reaching into the backpack she'd brought in place of her apron to fish out a couple of garbage bags. "I should...probably stop by the shed and grab the stepladder," she added before motioning towards one of the banners hanging on a nearby gazebo.

Mr. Yagi cast a brief look at the banner before stepping under it and plucking one end from its position.

"Oh, right your…tall," she muttered half beneath her breath. He gave her a slight smile as he pulled the rest of the banner down.

Rin got to work removing and replacing decorations. Every couple of minutes she cast a brief look at her neighbor, who was using his freakish height to get to all the of stuff that was out of reach to her. He looked admittedly out of place. He was wearing clothing suitable for an office job, clean and neat but also just as over-sized as everything else she had seen him wear. The effect was slightly mitigated however by the fact that his shirt was tucked in and his large sleeves were partially covered by dark arm warmers. He didn't seem bothered by the fact that he wasn't dressed to work outdoors, his only adjustment being to loosen his tie a bit.

After working for ten minutes or so in silence, she once again began to think on how to start a conversation and finally decided to just go for it, seizing at the only thing she knew about him that seemed like it wouldn't lead to talk about work or personal matters.

"So…what's your favorite movie?" Rin cursed silently at how awkward and random the question sounded as it came out of her mouth. It didn't seem to faze him much, however as he answered relatively quickly.

"I like movies with a lot of action and adventure. I enjoy a lot of the classic superhero movies…like the original superman, movies that inspire a sense of justice and hope."

"Oh," she said. For some reason that was hard to put her finger on, she didn't like his answer and not just because it was a bit vague and admittedly a little boring. Her disappointment must have come through in her voice too, because there was a brief silence before he spoke again.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No…I dunno…it just," Rin frowned as she tried to unravel the thought she was having. "Sounded rehearsed." That was it…he answered the question like he had done so a million times, like he was reading off of an internal script. "Sorry, forget about It…it was a dumb question."

"Ah, no it wasn't. I'm a little tired and I fell into an automatic…" he paused for a moment with some embarrassment and rubbed the back of his neck. "To be honest it's difficult for me to pick a favorite movie. When I was younger, I was…mystified by movies about heroes…but I wasn't particular about what kind. I probably liked bad movies as much as I liked good movies…just being able to escape for a couple hours was appealing. These days it's hard to find the time to sit down and watch anything and even when I do have time, I'm not very good at just…sitting still and turning off my brain. What about you? You said you like silent movies; do you have a favorite?"

"Um…I just like…older films…I guess…" she said, while distracting herself with work to avoid making eye contact with him. "I like Mikio Naruse but a lot of other silent films are…a bit too simple…too optimistic…I guess."

"And you don't like optimism?"

"No…I mean it's not…it's just…stuff isn't simple…" Rin said, feeling self conscious. He seemed to think about this as he crossed over and put one of the crumpled banners in a garbage bag.

"You're right, life is rarely simple," he said finally. "I don't think optimism is about ignoring that…I think it's about having hope even when things get rough…I guess I would consider myself an optimistic person though so…I suppose I don't really know how else to see things."

"Right well, anyone who works for All Might is probably required to be an optimist," she mumbled. Immediately after, she regretted saying anything at all and this regret just grew at the silence that followed her statement. The longer the silence stretched over her, the more anxious she became. She would have to chalk her runaway mouth up to her sleep deprived and slightly hungover brain. When he finally did speak again, she nearly jumped.

"You don't like him much, do you?"

Rin froze in the act of throwing away a long-deflated balloon lying on the grass as she felt her stomach drop. The question hit her like a bucket of ice water. It wasn't quite so bad as All Might himself showing up the day before, but it was still a near nightmare scenario for her. For the first time since she'd started the conversation with him, she met his gaze, barely even able to keep the sudden terror she was feeling off of her face. Instead of the judgement she expected, however she was only met again with that vague sadness.

"N…I…it's not that…I mean he…I…" she stammered out her non-response, as whatever brain cells that had been firing previously completely gave up on her. As she did, his sadness turned quickly to guilt.

"Hey, don't worry about it!" he said as he put his large hands up. "I didn't mean to upset you!"

"I...don't...I didn't..." she started. _Dammit...words...full sentences Rin, come on._ "I shouldn't have...said that...sorry."

"You don't have to apologize, really...It's...it's all right if you dislike him..."

Rin searched his face for a moment, but he just looked guilty and slightly nervous. She had to remind herself that this was All Might's secretary though…anything she told him could get back to the man, however nice he seemed.

"But, I mean…only criminals dislike All Might…" she muttered. He surprised her by chuckling.

"I don't know about that. I could name quite a few pro heroes who dislike him, and I know the police force get frustrated with him on a weekly basis," he said while rubbing the back of his neck again. "Anyways, I'm sure you have a good reason."

Rin felt slightly taken aback by this. Not only that he didn't seem to be judging her, but that everything he was saying sounded sincere, despite the fact that he worked for the hero and barely knew her. It was a little overwhelming to be honest. She also couldn't help but feel guilty about it. That was another thing she couldn't shake. She always felt guilty when someone seemed to have a modicum of faith in her...like she was deceiving them. Her hatred for All Might went a long way back. When she was younger she had been absolutely certain that she had a good reason for it, but with age had come uncertainty and doubt. Unfortunately that sort of uncertainty brought it's own flavor of hatred.

"I dunno, probably not..." Rin sighed, she didn't want to talk about her father...or herself, but she still felt like she had to offer some sort of explanation. "I guess...he just seems...fake."

XXX

Toshinori had not planned on talking about All Might. In fact he was deeply regretting bringing up the subject at all. That she had accepted his help, however begrudgingly was a small victory and he could have easily just brushed off her statement about his optimism. He should have. Instead he had forced this conversation and was now feeling horrible guilt over the fact that Rin was unknowingly talking about something that clearly made her uncomfortable with _him_.

"You think All Might is fake?" he said while tugging at one of the sleeves of his button up, anxiously aware of his hero suite underneath.

"Well...yeah...I mean...he just seems...like his smile," she said, while squirming a little and avoiding his gaze. He felt another stab of guilt. "Even happy people don't smile all the time. No one knows anything about him...there's never been any scandals about All Might...not even minor ones...everything about him just feels so...it's like he's not even a real person...he's perfect."

Toshinori felt a vague churning in his gut. Of course everything she was saying was more or less true, as far as the public were concerned All Might was flawless. Much like his smile, it was meant to put people at ease, the idea that he might be capable of anything, could stop any villain, could rescue anyone in need of rescuing. It wasn't true. He had to face the truth of it every day when he looked in the mirror, every time he coughed up blood, every time he needed to make a quick escape to keep this shriveled emaciated body a secret as he ended a day of hero work with barely enough energy to stand up.

"No one's perfect," Toshinori said with a sigh.

"Right well...obviously..." Rin said miserably as she picked up one of the stricken paper flowers and threw it in the garbage. Toshinori scowled as he tried to think of something else to say to reassure her, feeling both ashamed and frustrated with himself.

"I can see your point," he said. He saw her freeze again as he did. "Especially for someone who dislikes the idea of fake optimism, I can see how All Might could come off as...insincere."

He sighed again and wondered if it would be best to just excuse himself and leave her be. He was about to do just that when she spoke again.

"I don't...dislike that you're optimistic..." she said with a hint of shyness.

"Oh?" he said. He didn't know how else to respond.

"I just...didn't want you to think...that I did..." she said before getting back to work with perhaps more concentration then was necessary.

"I uh...thank you," Toshinori felt oddly touched by the statement and by the fact that she had decided to share the sentiment despite the awkwardness of the conversation.

XXX

The next hour or so was uneventful. They got most of the decorations in the main area of the park picked up. The next holiday the park was going to celebrate was health-sports day, but most of the replacement decorations she was putting up today were generic signage and other items that were unlikely to blow away within the next month. Only some of it was placed in the open area in the middle of the park. The rest was going up at the entrances and along the paths. She mentioned this to Mr. Yagi in case his enthusiastic nature would be dampened by the thought of so much legwork, but apparently his intention to help was unyielding.

After the brief and slightly terrifying conversation surrounding All Might, things had gone relatively quiet again between them. About the only thing she'd said apart from pointing out that the rest of the signs needed to be carried elsewhere was to mumble something about heading to the west entrance first. If she wasn't so tired, she might have found the energy to worry about it, but she was beginning to crash hard and was therefore grateful that he wasn't trying to break the silence. Earlier in the morning she had dragged herself out of bed following her bosses call and for once, hadn't even stopped for coffee because her stomach had been upset and her head had been aching. She'd only taken the time to grab a thermos of water, not even bothering to stuff her pockets with her usual hard candies or having the foresight to grab sunglasses. Now, she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that she hadn't eaten anything all day.

The park had a few food stands that she rarely visited due to her habit of working through her hunger. Well partially because of that. The stands were also frequently unmanned due to the parks emptiness, especially as the temperature dropped in the fall. Today was nice however, though perhaps a bit too sunny for her liking and she could see that at least a couple of the stands were open with a few stragglers hanging around them.

"Sorry...hang on," Rin said as she stopped partway down one of the paths and attempted to search through her bag while also trying to keep hold of the signs in her other hand. Her neighbor stopped and eyed her curiously. After a moment he approached and extended his hand. She eyed it dumbly for a second before her sluggish brain put two and two together as she realized he was offering to take the signs while she searched. "Right...thanks."

He took them wordlessly. She'd been more or less trying to avoid meeting his gaze since their conversation before. Now that she did, it occurred to her that he also looked tired. She'd been careful about not giving him too much to carry, but apart from that she hadn't really thought about whether or not he should be doing any kind of labor outdoors. She'd been more preoccupied with the daunting task of stringing words together. As she worried over this, she was also becoming increasingly aware that she had completely failed to bring any money with her. She checked the pockets of the pack multiple times even after she was certain she'd left her wallet at home.

"Shit."

"Everything okay?" Mr. Yagi said with some concern.

"Fine...I just...didn't bring any money or caffeine or candy or sunglasses...I guess I just wanted today to be as painful as possible," she said as she threw the items she'd pulled out of the pack back inside.

"Sorry?" He said.

"Nothing," she said wearily. "I just haven't eaten today."

He continued to stare at her for a moment before casting a brief look at the nearby food stand and then looking back at her with understanding as her brief fit of words apparently clicked in place.

"I have some money if you want to get something to eat."

Rin frowned.

"No, it's fine...I can wait."

He continued to watch her for a moment and she felt a vague stirring of discomfort at the slightly perceptive look in his eyes. It reminded her of Kaiya, who could always see through every front she put up. Her suspicions were confirmed when he spoke again after apparently finding an angle at which she might accept his offer

"Well, I haven't eaten today either," he said. "How about I buy myself some food and you can share it. Are you allowed to take breaks?"

Rin sighed. She was too tired and too hungry to fight it. Besides, she had just been worrying about whether or not he should be doing as much work as he was...maybe a break wasn't a bad idea.

"Yeah," she mumbled. "I can take breaks."

He smiled and before she could take the materials he'd grabbed so that she could search her bag, he hoisted them up and headed towards the food stand. Rin pulled her pack back on and followed him.

"Do you like takoyaki, or would you prefer something else?" he said as they neared the stand, which was indeed selling takoyaki. Clearly he had already dispersed with the front that he was buying food for himself.

"This is fine," Rin said gloomily.

After purchasing the largest portion available at the stand, the signs were set aside and her neighbor sat on a nearby bench. She followed suit with some awkwardness, pulling her legs up onto the seat and folding her arms. It was a subconscious act that Kaiya had pointed out on previous occasions was probably a defense mechanism. Rin scowled and then altered the way she was sitting slightly so that it didn't appear quite so guarded.

The takoyaki were on small sticks. Once they were seated, her neighbor handed her one of the balls of fried batter. She took it from him and eyed it for a moment before taking a small bite. Despite how hungry she was, she was also feeling nervous again, which was causing a frustrating battle in her stomach between her nerves and appetite. Perhaps for the show of it, he grabbed one for himself as well, but didn't eat right away, instead resting his arm on his leg with a sigh.

After a few minutes Rin was beginning to regret taking his offer when it became apparent that they were both sitting and silence and barely eating. Tired and frustrated, she decided to break the silence with a suspicion she'd begun to have since he'd purchased the food.

"Can you eat this?"

He looked at her with confusion.

"The food, can you eat it? You said you can't have sugar and alcohol...can you eat this?" She clarified when it became clear that he needed more to go on.

"Ah, sorry, yes...it should be fine," he said with some embarrassment. Rin frowned. 'It should be fine' wasn't a statement that inspired a lot of confidence. As if to prove it to her, he took a bite of his food and gave her a brief smile. The smile looked a bit strained and lacked it's previous authenticity. This tugged at her, even as she was telling herself not push the potential awkwardness of the situation further. Rin was not a stranger to discomfort, it was practically her default state of being, and she could tell that the question had made him uncomfortable...which made her uncomfortable and also brought back memories from the previous evening.

_Just shut up and eat, _she thought to herself. _Every time you bring up anything with this man it backfires on you. _

"I never uh...apologized for last night..." Mr. Yagi said, as if reading her mind. Wait...he couldn't right? Rin felt a brief moment of panic as it occurred to her that she had no idea what his quirk was. What if he could read her mind?

"Uh, what...why?" She said, this new revelation prodding at her nerves even as she was trying to convince herself that he was probably not a mind reader. "Why would you apologize...?"

"Well..." he paused as he seemed to ponder over which thing he was going to apologize for. "I left in a hurry...I didn't want you to get the wrong idea."

"Oh, yeah...well...it's fine, it was a shitty evening," she said bitterly. "I mean I wouldn't have asked you to come if...Kaiya hadn't put me up to it."

"Ah," he said. He didn't sound surprised, but the melancholy in his voice was unmistakable. After a moment her brain caught up to her mouth and it occurred to her that what she had just said had probably come across as rather unfortunate.

"I didn't mean...all I meant was that I don't like bars or crowds and...Kaiya sometimes encourages me to be social...it's not that I...I'm sorry...I didn't mean it like that," she said.

"It's all right," he said. "To be honest I was surprised you invited me at all. I'm sorry if me being there made the evening harder for you."

Rin groaned inwardly.

"Could you..." she started. "Could you please stop apologizing for shit. I...look if anything I should be apologizing to you for last night. Like...for all of it...I'm not surprised you left in a hurry, if it had been me I would have bailed a lot sooner." There was a silence that followed this, in which she got the distinct impression that Mr. Yagi was battling with the urge to apologize again.

"I really did have an urgent call," Mr. Yagi said after a moment.

"So urgent that you decided to walk to the bus stop instead of accepting a ride back." She couldn't stop herself. An immediate look of guilt spread across his face. "It's fine...really...it's probably what I would have done too...except I probably would have forgotten there was a bus stop nearby, and would have...found a way to forget my keys..."

Rin distracted herself by taking another bite of her takoyaki. Beside her, her neighbor seemed to be undergoing some sort of internal struggle. She wondered vaguely if he was trying to find some other way to apologize without encouraging any kind of further ire from her. Finally he sighed.

"I uh...I'm...you're right...I probably could have accepted the ride back," he paused again, clearly struggling with whatever he was trying to say. "I'm not good at...being inconvenient to people. You and your friend were really nice...I guess I just don't handle it well."

Rin marveled for a moment at how every conversation she'd had with her neighbor in the past few days had managed to tap into deeply personal matters. Usually she was good at avoiding this. Still, his statement was so...sincere, that she actually felt a little regretful of the fact that she was in no way equipped to respond to it in the way he probably deserved.

"You weren't being inconvenient. I meant it when I said you literally could not have made that bar any worse then it was...and I know Kaiya gets a little intense sometimes...but she's just like that."

He smiled with some amusement.

"She said something similar about you," he said.

"Yeah well, she doesn't realize how annoying she is sometimes," Rin mumbled. He chuckled. "Kaiya's an empath. She can't help but get up in other people's business."

"An empath?"

"Yeah...her quirk...she can tell how people are feeling through touch," Rin said, honestly grateful to be changing the subject.

"Oh! I imagine that's useful as a teacher," Yagi said.

"Yeah, I guess," Rin said as she finished the takoyaki she was holding. "It's irritating as a friend though."

He laughed again. This time it was deeper and richer. Rin relaxed a couple of degrees as it broke any tension that might have been left over from before.

"I can see what you mean," he said after a moment. "I have a good friend who's a human lie detector."

"That might be worse..." Rin said, after a moments thought. He smiled and offered her another one of the fried squid balls. It was amazing how a genuine smile transformed his face. Rin took it and looked away with some embarrassment.

Before he could take another himself he frowned and began searching his pockets. After a moment he pulled out his phone which had evidently been vibrating.

"Sorry, my phone," he said as unlocked it and eyed the screen. Rin was in a position to see his expression change slowly. "Shit, uh, I'm sorry, I need to go," he said as he jumped up from his seat.

"Uh...ok."

"I...ah..." he paused for another moment as if trying to think of something else to say, before handing her the rest of the takoyaki with an apologetic look and heading hurriedly down the path.

Rin sat back against the bench feeling...strange. Normally she would expect to feel relief now that she was alone, but for reasons she couldn't quite explain, she didn't. After some thought it occurred to her that this might be because she had actually kind of enjoyed his company in a odd seemingly masochistic way. This was interrupted by her own phone making a hideous noise, the sort she generally associated with alarms about weather emergencies. She shook the thought from her head and pulled it out of her bag to make the noise stop. She frowned when she looked at it. It was an alert...and one she'd never seen before. Rin clicked on it, opening a window to the news statement. As it loaded she started to pull her thermos out of her pack...but froze when page loaded and the sentence at the top caught her eye.

**Might Tower Under Attack**.


	8. Fire at the Ukiyo-za

Chapter Eight

Fire at the Ukiyo-za

Quirks had changed a lot of things when they manifested. For many a lot of those changes were good, but anything that has a large impact inevitably has negative side effects as well. One change was that the police force as well as other emergency forces had been largely downsized in many cities and countries throughout the world. The change had been gradual at first, but these days some places had seen as much as a 70% dip in traditional emergency services when compared to the days before there were pro heroes. Minato was no exception and the cities forces had seen another dip since All Might had established his headquarters there.

The government paid for both the police and pro heroes. The hero field was not only thriving but growing with every year to the point where some crimes were headed off by multiple heroes stepping on each-others toes in an attempt to resolve the conflict. The money that paid those heroes had to come from somewhere and since the police and firemen were doing less work then they used to, it made sense to downsize.

It worked…for the most part. The problem was that if the wrong person were to notice that, say most of the fire stations in the city had closed years ago, that knowledge could be used for potentially nefarious purposes. A distraction could divert what forces the fire department had to spare, at least if it were a good enough distraction and then said person might, for example find a place out of the way, far enough so that even on a good day, a lot of damage could be done before help could arrive.

There were several Kabuki theaters in Tokyo. Many had been around for some time in one fashion or another or at the very least rebuilt after fires and earthquakes. The Ukiyo-za was not one of them, though it was fashioned to look like it was historical and had attempted a design that put one in the mind of classic kabuki theater. Even though it lacked the historical flair and indeed penchant for catching fire as of some of the others and despite the fact that it was located so far on the outskirts of the city that it could nearly be considered not in the city, it still saw a decent amount of business when it put on shows. Quirks had changed a lot of things when they manifested, but kabuki was alive and well.

On this evening Ukiyo-za was booked. It was showing three acts from three different plays over the course of the day and was about to show its final act of the evening, which was set to go on for a couple of hours. Many theater goers who had bought tickets for the evening act, or who had bought tickets for all three acts were killing time in the restaurant.

It wasn't a particularly special night. It wasn't an especially significant series of plays. Nevertheless, Ukiyo-za was about to take its first big step towards having something in common with some of the most famous theaters in history. Namely, catastrophe.

There was a woman sitting at a small bar in the restaurant at the Ukiyo-za. She was attractive and was dressed in nice business wear, had an elegant haircut and tasteful subtle makeup. She was also wearing gloves, or rather, one glove. The other had been removed. With her ungloved hand, she ran well-manicured fingers over the polished wood counter, before taking her glass and downing the last of her drink. The bartender had been casting brief surreptitious looks at her, not because he found her presence odd, but because she was one of the best-looking women he had served for some time.

"Another?" he asked, while putting on a smile that he hoped was charming.

"I'm finished," she replied as she stood from the stool she had been occupying for the last hour or so. She gave him a thin smile that sat on her attractive face a little awkwardly. "Wouldn't want to miss the show." As she said this, she replaced the glove on her hand and for a moment the bartender caught a whiff of something…odd…not unfamiliar, but a little out of place given the setting. It almost smelled like gasoline.

XXX

Might Tower was buzzing with activity. Both police cars and firetrucks had been dispersed, although it was clear that they had very little to do. Toshinori himself had arrived minutes after leaving the park and quickly recognized that All Might was also probably not needed, as the situation had gone from the quick dire tone of a place potentially under attack to a lot of people milling about and talking excitably after a few minor fires were put out. Nevertheless, he was there in his muscle form because it wouldn't do to NOT be there when your own headquarters was on alert. It would have probably looked bad if All Might sent his secretary for something like this…even if his secretary was technically him.

"Vandals most likely," one of the officers said. "We didn't get any footage because most of the explosives went off in restrooms, but we'll double check all of the cameras and pull the list of everyone who signed in. We should be done doing a sweep of the building soon."

"You're doing an excellent jon, thank you!" he responded while giving the officer a thumbs up. As the officer left, his massive shoulders sagged slightly. No one had been badly injured, as the explosives had been low grade and vandals sounded like a relatively trivial problem on the surface, but he couldn't help but feel a touch uneasy even so, not least because he couldn't remember ever having a problem with vandals before. Sure, the occasional reporter or fan managed to sneak past the front desk and security, but no one had ever gotten far enough into the building to do something like place several explosives undetected.

"Um, excuse me, sir." All Might turned toward the small meek voice which belonged to one of the women who worked at his front desk. She immediately went red at his attention. "A package arrived for you earlier that was marked urgent. It looked like it came from the police station! I was going to give it to Mr. Yagi, but I think he slipped out earlier so it's in your office!" her words came out in a giant rush.

"I appreciate that! I'll be sure to have a look!"

"Thank you! I mean you're welcome!" She said before hurrying back towards the desk and shooting a look at another receptionist, who was giggling.

He headed to his office once it was clear that he wasn't needed anymore even as a figurehead and released his muscle form after carefully shutting the door. There was indeed a package on his desk. He sat down with a sigh and turned it in his long fingers for a second before opening it carefully. If it was from the police station, then it was probably paperwork. Tsukaiuchi was kind enough to handle most of that these days, but some still got sent to his office.

When it was about half open, open enough to see what was inside he froze. After a moment, he carefully tipped the contents onto his desk and stared at them. There were only two things in the package. One was a folded piece of note paper and the other was a blank mask with a single word written on it; Strength.

A few seconds later he was on the phone with Tsukauichi, while carefully fumbling in his desk drawer for the first aid kit he knew he had inside.

"It was sent to the front desk?" The younger man was asking.

"Yes, it has a stamp from the police department on it," Toshinori said, balancing the phone on his shoulder. He'd found the first aid kit and was thumbing through its contents.

"Be careful, if it's like the others it might have dna on it, we don't know how he controls people with his quirk yet."

"I remember," Toshinori said as he pulled on the cheap pair of vinyl gloves he'd found buried below a mess of band aids and burn cream. After he had them on, he unfolded the piece of paper.

"In fact, it might be best if you leave it alone and call a couple of officers up. I can be there in twenty minutes."

Toshinori didn't answer. He was reading the note carefully. The writing was comprehensive and neat, even eloquent in its own way, but it was nevertheless a message which hinted that the writer was a few cards short of a full deck. It read;

_To the Symbol of Peace,_

_We have not been formally introduced, but I know you are searching for me. Tell me, hero, are you familiar with the ancient Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang? Japan began to adopt the cosmology in the 6__th__ century, but of course, its presence is known in every culture. Duality is so engrained in our ethos that most people don't even see it anymore and that is as things should be._

_Balance is needed for the world to function properly. People need to die so others can be born into a world that is not too crowded for them. Darkness needs light to define it. The weak rely on the strong to protect them._

_But you, you are too bright._

_Thus far, my attempts to get your attention have gone as expected, but now it is time for me to take some of your light away._

_The address below is where I will begin to set my stage. It will take more than this, as your tampering with the forces of the world are so caustic that much is needed to bring it back to where it should be, but for now, their deaths will return some of the balance you have disrupted by your perfection…and sadly, they will find help slow in coming._

_I wish you the best in dealing with the unexpected events at Might Tower._

_-Kage_

XXX

Naomasa frowned when he was greeted by silence.

"All Might?" he said wearily.

"No…there are plenty of officers here" All Might said after a moment, slowly as if coming back from faraway. "I'm going to text you an address, look into it for me…actually just meet me there if you can."

"Uh…sure, did something happen? All Might-" he frowned again as the phone call ended. A couple seconds later he received the address via text. A quick search told him it was for a theater on the outskirts of town. Tsukauichi didn't have long to wonder why his friend was sending this specific address however, because a minute or so after that, an emergency call came in for the same theater.

As he headed quickly to his car he texted All Might back. Halfway through a message advising the older man to at least think about staying away, he shook his head and erased the text before starting again. It was unlikely that All Might would be deterred by such a warning and that was supposing he wasn't already there.

**This feels like a trap. Please be careful. ** He sent instead.

XXX

All Might did receive the text and cast a look at it briefly before arriving at the theater moments later. A handful of police officers were standing outside of the building. Many of them were seeing to a crowd that had gathered on the street. Given that he wasn't exactly the stealthiest of people, his presence became known immediately and he heard various people in the crowd loudly addressing him. He raised one of his massive hands and brandished a large brilliant smile. The more uneasy he felt, the larger his smile generally was.

"Everything's fine now, because I AM HERE!" he said loudly before looking towards the building. He did his best to keep the anger out of his voice. The villain who had started this fire was trying to hurt people to _make a point. _And what was especially frustrating and especially shameful to him was that it was becoming increasingly obvious that they might be trying to make this point to _him_, or at the very least, at his expense. Playing with people's lives as if they were things. He wasn't going to let them get away with it.

Tsukauichi believed this was a trap, but whether it was a trap or not was irrelevant. He couldn't not try. It just wasn't an option for him. However, because of the younger man's warnings, he resisted the urge to charge straight into the theater and instead approached the officer that appeared to be in charge. He was surrounded by another officer and a couple of pro heroes who All Might vaguely recognized but hadn't ever worked with.

"Officer! I need a rundown, quickly," he said. The police officer, who had been in the process of what appeared to be an argument with the other officer, looked up at him with frustration at being interrupted. His expression shifted quickly when he saw who was addressing him.

"Oh, thank god!" he said. "I heard about Might Tower and thought…well I thought you would be there…"

"Well, I'm _here_ now," All Might said, doing his best not to sound impatient. "Please tell me what happened."

"Right, the fire broke out about ten minutes ago and spread fast. The fire department has been informed, but it's going to take them nearly an hour to get here and by then…well…"

"There are people still inside, how many?" All Might said.

"Some got out, but the area where the stage is has been…we think it's been blocked off…the play had started so there are hundreds…"

"Has anyone tried to get to them?"

"We can't," said one of the pros. "None of us can get inside." All Might looked up from the officer and amended the thought he'd had when approaching the group. Technically he _had _worked with this pro hero before…a little over a week ago at the Shinagawa train station.

The officer he had been talking to grabbed at his belt where his radio had begun to go off. All Might vaguely recognized Tsukauchi's voice on the other side as the man answered and walked a few steps away from the conversation to hear what the detective was saying.

"Ah, uh…Sumitomo wasn't it? Junichiro?" All Might said, turning back to the young pro. The young man looked surprised.

"Right…wow…I'm…impressed you remember…"

"You were saying something about the fire," All Might prompted. He wondered vaguely how intact his smile still was. Sometimes he smiled for so long and so often that he couldn't even feel it anymore.

"Right. Some of us tried to enter, but the fire is spreading weirdly fast…we don't have the quirks…but you're here now!" he added the last cheerfully.

"Right, of course," All Might said, trying to keep the gloominess out of his voice as he eyed the policeman as he returned.

"Uh, Detective Tsukauichi wants to talk to you…" the officer said. All Might accepted the radio.

"All Might, good. I thought you might have already…listen, I need you to wait for me to get there before you move into the building. I didn't have enough time to get as much information as I'd like, but from what I heard from officer Fujita it sounds like whoever started the fire was able to control how it spread throughout the building. It's chemical, so we can't call in anyone with water quirks. As a result, the whole place is unstable. Think about it, Might Tower is attacked, emergency forces are diverted there and you get a message with this address on it. I think someone _wants_ you to charge in."

All Might looked up at the officer. He and Sumitomo were watching him. Everyone was watching him.

"You said the fire is chemical?" All Might said to the officer, who nodded.

"It was started with something like gasoline or petroleum. We can't get backdraft or another pro with a water quirk out here because water would just make the fire worse."

"And the building is unstable?" the officer nodded again.

"A couple officers tried to get inside, and part of the front entrance collapsed…the theater is modeled after a classic kabuki theater…so it's mostly wood. There will be some fire preventatives…especially in the main part of the theater where we think everyone is stuck…but…the whole place is burning around them…"

"We can't use water…how do we get the fires out?"

"For a chemical fire? We need carbon dioxide or something like it. The fire department have pressurized carbon dioxide hoses but by the time they get across the city…I've tried to think of something else but…no…the only way to kill a chemical fire is to deprive it of oxygen. But…well you can move fast right?" he added the last hopefully and with perhaps a hint of worry. All Might wasn't listening. He was staring in the direction of the building with a frozen expression. The shadows in his eyes were deep enough so that it would be difficult for anyone observing to tell quite what he was looking at, but he was in fact eyeing a couple of decorative torches lying stricken on the ground outside of the entrance.

"Deprive it of oxygen," he repeated, more or less to himself.

After a moment he unfroze and addressed the increasingly worried looking police officer.

"How long do these people have?"

"A half an hour…maybe a bit longer…"

All Might pressed the button on the radio and raised it slightly.

"Tsukauichi, are you still there?"

"Yes, I'll be there in a couple minutes,"

"Good, when you get here try to figure out what the best way in is," he said before handing the radio back to the officer. "Officer, I need to step away for a moment. I'll be back as quickly as I can."

"You er…what," the man said after opening and shutting his mouth a couple times. Now he looked positively terrified. "You're leaving?"

"Not to worry! Three minutes…" he winced a little. "Maybe five. Work with detective Tsukauichi to find an entrance that won't collapse, regardless of whether or not this works, I'm going in when I return." And with that he was gone.

XXX

Rin blinked as a piece of rice slowly fell from the chopsticks that had been frozen about an inch from her face for the last minute. She was sitting on the couch with her legs folded and had been watching one of the movies Mr. Yagi had lent her. Well…she'd been trying to watch it anyways. Her mind kept wandering and she was not sure what was actually going on in the film except that it was about twenty minutes in, a man seemed to be trying to shoot himself and another man had just stopped him. She also noted the English dialogue that flashed on screen and realized she'd forgotten to turn on subtitles.

As much as she grumbled about having to go to work, it had been a pleasant distraction. And speaking of things that had been surprisingly pleasant…that distraction had included Mr. Yagi, even allowing for how awkward…and slightly worrying some of their conversation had been. Of course, now that that distraction was gone, and she was left to her own thoughts her mind inevitably turned on her again. She had to stop herself from texting Kaiya multiple times throughout the afternoon and early evening, mainly because she knew that anything she sent would be a confused mess of linguistic turmoil involving All Might and Mr. Yagi and her own paranoia.

She unfolded her legs with a sigh and set the chopsticks down, peering down at the floor to locate the runaway lump of rice. Just as she found it, there was a massive noise from outside. It sounded as if something heavy landed on her porch, which creaked and groaned from the impact, and she was almost certain she felt the whole building shake slightly.

After a couple seconds there was a knock on her door. Rin looked in the direction of the sound dumbly, before slowly raising from her position crouched on the floor. There was a window directly to the left of the door that looked out onto the porch, but the lights in her apartment were on and it was getting dark outside, so all she could currently see was her own puzzled reflection staring back at her.

"What the hell…" she muttered as she stood and approached cautiously. She tried to get a look out the window without alerting whoever was standing outside but gave up when it became clear it wasn't going to work. It was probably too late to pretend she wasn't home…it wasn't as if she could just turn out the lights and duck behind the door now. As she considered this, she was startled by a second knock, this time louder.

Rin frowned and undid the locks before opening the door a crack. She got a glimpse of blue and red and yellow before her eyes adjusted and she attempted to slam it shut again, while half shouting something that would have been difficult to repeat, as it seemed to be an amalgamation of several curse words.

A large hand was placed on the outside before she could do this, and Rin felt a strange almost unbalanced feeling as shutting her door became suddenly impossible, held open by an immovable force.

"Please, R-Miss Hajime, I just need to speak with you," came the booming voice of All Might.

Even though her muscles were screaming that she might as well be pushing against a mountain, Rin continued in her attempts to close the door for a few more seconds before finally giving up and instead taking a large faltering step backwards. The giant hero opened the door the rest of the way. Rin took another step back and almost lost her balance as she encountered her couch but was able to steady herself and placed her palms down on the piece of furniture.

'_Shit, I should have just pretended I wasn't home,' _her slightly garbled mind offered as she watched the object of years of fear and anger duck slightly to avoid the top of her doorway before entering her living room. In truth, she'd been dreading something like this since she'd yelled at the hero in public the day before, had, in fact been _waiting_ for something like this for a long time. This didn't make it any less surreal to have him standing in her apartment.

"I apologize for dropping in like this," All Might said, and Rin felt a twist of anger again. "I-"

"What the hell do you want?" she interrupted. He paused for a moment before responding.

"Hypoxia…" he said. Rin winced at the use of her father's code name. "He could remove the oxygen from large spaces, such as rooms and buildings? I know you inherited his quirk. Is it as powerful as his?"

Her expression must have told him what he needed to know because he took another step forward. She instinctively shrank against the couch, her fingers digging into its fibers like a vice. She saw the big man hesitate, and his expression flickered into something like uncertainty. After a moment, he raised his large hands. She eyed them in horror, waiting for something terrible to happen, but he just held them out in front of him, almost in a gesture of surrender.

XXX

Toshinori tended to act on impulse, had in fact been criticized for it in the past. He jumped into situations without thinking them through. He reacted instead of planning. It occurred to him slowly that he probably should have thought this through a little more. Though, he suspected that if he had, he might've concluded that it was very possibly a bad idea for a lot of reasons.

He was here now. He didn't have any other ideas and there wasn't much time.

He didn't know Rin very well but from the few interactions he'd had, he was beginning to come to a few conclusions about her and the biggest one was that she was afraid. Not afraid in the sense of the obvious terror she was eyeing him with now, but a sort of generalized fear that she carried everywhere with her; a fear to let her guard down, a fear of saying the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing…maybe even of thinking the wrong thing. The sort of fear that comes from years of scrutiny and doubt and judgement. For now, he was trying to put his guilt aside over what part he probably had in that fear. He'd worry about that later, but he could at least try to be a bit more tactful and gentler in his approach.

"It's all right," he said after a moment, his voice taking on much more subdued tones. "I didn't mean you upset you-"

"First the park…and…and the coffee shop…now here?" She said frantically. "If you're going to arrest me just do it!" Some of the fear in her eyes was beginning to disperse, if only because it was slowly being replaced by anger again.

"Pro heroes don't arrest people, miss," he said calmly, while trying to use the voice he generally reserved for the people that he rescued who were somewhere on the edge of hysteria. "I need your help," he added.

"Wh-what?" She said after a second, looking slightly bewildered.

"There's a theater about five miles from here. It's burning," he said. "There aren't any firetrucks in the area, and I was told the only way to stop it is to deprive it of oxygen. There are a lot of people trapped inside."

For the first time since he'd entered, she tore her eyes away from him for a second as her brain tried to process this new information. As it began to sink in, she looked at him again with fresh dawning horror.

"Are you kidding me?"

"I know this is a lot to ask..."

"I _don't_ use my quirk," she said.

"It would only be to put the fire out…"

"I'm not a…hero…or villain…I'm not…anything, so just…get out of my apartment. Stop following me!"

He placed his fists on his hips, bowing his golden head with a sigh.

"I understand your apprehension and of course I won't force you. But this isn't about heroes or villains. However you feel about your quirk, it can be used to do a lot of good," when he looked up at her again he was met with an expression of pure hatred.

"Get. Out." She said…putting venom into each word.

"Of course," he said after a moment. "I apologize again for the intrusion."

He shouldn't have expected differently. It was asking a lot of anyone, let alone someone who most likely had so many complicated feelings about their own quirk. So that was that. He would have to do things his own way. Maybe he could be fast enough.

XXX

Rin watched the hero duck out of her doorway again with some disbelief. So that was that…she'd said no…and he was leaving? It couldn't be that easy.

She relaxed her fingers a little. She was still trembling, but the anger from a second ago had settled into a hollow sick feeling in her stomach. Now that he wasn't in the room, now that she could think a little clearer she realized that throughout most of the interaction, All Might hadn't been smiling.

After a moment of considering this, she reached for her phone, sitting a few inches away and pulled up a news feed. She didn't have to look far.

The theater All Might had mentioned was one of the old Kabuki theaters. Most of the news stories were about it. She thumbed through the titles, feeling increasingly uneasy as she did.

**THEATRE BURNING…**

**OVER 200 PEOPLE TRAPPED INSIDE BURNING THEATRE…**

**EMERGENCY FORCES AREN'T COMING**

**ALL MIGHT SEEN LEAVING…**

_'It's not your problem' _a treacherous internal voice said. _'If those people die, it won't be your fault.' _And it was true. She was a Groundskeeper. She had absolutely no obligation to save anyone.

When they'd been in Highschool Kaiya had tried on a couple of occasions to convince her to transfer to a hero program. Rin had always been against it. Kaiya hadn't understood, couldn't understand. Prior to their friendship she had regarded her in the same way most people did, with fear and suspicion, but her view of Rin had become skewed because of how their friendship started. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary Kaiya was convinced that she was a good person and no amount of argument could persuade her otherwise.

No, technically it wouldn't be her fault…but deep inside she knew that that wasn't entirely true. If someone was in trouble and she could do something about it, then in a way it made them her responsibility. By asking, damn him, All Might had made them her responsibility. She could ignore that responsibility and could make excuses as to why it was perfectly sensible to do so…but she would always know that that was all they were. Excuses.

'_You can't do this. You're not a hero. You are not a good person.'_

"Fuck!" she said out loud before dragging her work boots on. "Fuck, fuck fuck…why? Why is this happening…fuck me," she grabbed her jacket as well before pushing open her door. A huge part of her hoped that All Might would be gone. If he were gone, she could go back inside and try to forget any of this had happened, most likely with the aid of alcohol. When she nearly ran into him, she cursed inwardly…and then realized she was actually still just cursing out loud.

He turned, some surprise evident on his perfect chiseled face and she felt her throat dry up and the stream of curse words with it. She caught her breath and finally managing to croak out;

"I'll do it…"

Suddenly his smile was back and it grinded on her nerves. Before he could say anything, she added;

"But you…you won't come to my apartment again…or the park…ever…you'll leave me alone," she said. Her voice was wavering, filled with fear and anger. The only reason she wasn't visibly shaking was that she was tightening all her muscles against it. He seemed to consider this.

"You don't have to bargain, Miss Hajime," he said. "If that's what you want, I promise, regardless of whether you come with me," He extended his massive hand and she withdrew from it immediately. The smile on his face wavered again as he dropped the hand back to his side.

"All right," he said, apparently regaining his composure. "There's no time to lose. Sorry about this, but I'm afraid there's no other way to get back to the theater in time. I suggest you hold on tight and keep your mouth and eyes closed."

"Wait, what-" she started.

She tensed as the man wrapped one massive arm around her, but before she could react, she felt a rush of wind and force as the ground dropped away. Rin had never been in a plane, although even if she had, it probably still wouldn't have prepared her for this experience. She promptly forgot his advice, her mouth and eyes standing agape in a silent scream as the wind, no longer the gentle pressing force she was familiar with on the ground, but a violent presence, blew her hair and jacket around her. She also promptly forgot any aversion she might've felt towards the man as she was faced with the sudden more pressing danger of being hundreds of feet above the city and so grasped at him with as much desperation that a drowning man might grasp at proffered branch.

It was a bad time to realize that she might really dislike heights.


	9. Strength

Chapter Nine:

Strength

They were up in the air for only a minute perhaps, but it was one of the longest minutes Rin had ever experienced.

Although not her most prominent concern, now that the sun had gone down the air had grown chilly and as high as they were, and as fast as they were going with the wind whipping around them, it was freezing. In moments she could barely feel her fingers as she clutched at the tight fabric of All Might's costume.

"Miss Hajime, I said close your eyes and mouth!" All Might said with a slight grunt as he landed briefly on the rooftop of a high building before taking off again.

"Fuck!" she responded, her eyes streaming from the cold and wind. Apparently, he didn't have anything suitable to reply with.

She did close her eyes and lower her head a little for the remainder of the trip, which helped with the cold and wind, but did nothing for the feeling of intense vertigo. Landing didn't turn out to be much of an improvement either, given they were landing in the middle of a chaotic situation, a burning building at the center of it.

All Might lowered her to the ground carefully, but as soon as her feet touched it and his grip on her released, her legs folded under her as she succumbed to the gravity that, as far as she was concerned, had completely abandoned her moments before.

"Apologies," All Might said. As the spots vanished from her eyes, she became vaguely aware that he was trying to help her up. "If there had been more time I wouldn't have-"

"Don't touch me," she said quickly, interrupting whatever he had been about to say. He ceased in his attempt and slowly withdrew.

"Okay…" he said.

She got to her feet, her legs still trembling and got her first good look at her surroundings. It didn't improve things for her very much. The theater itself was…hazy. Rin had never seen a burning building outside of the news or movies and therefore had no frame of reference as to what it should look like, but the mind conjured up images of bright flames dancing in the windows and billowing smoke. In reality the theater was a dark shape in a weird orange haze, stuck in its own soupy fog, which grew thicker as the heat from the fire touched the cool autumn air.

They'd landed in the center of an area barricaded off from civilians. There were a handful of police officers within the barrier, some of them holding back dozens of onlookers. And thanks to the #1 hero, Japan's symbol of peace, with his bright bullseye of a costume, she suddenly found herself in the center of that attention. At the best of times Rin tried to avoid crowds. This…this was a nightmare…except even her paranoid brain would have never conjured up this scenario as a possibility. Years of avoiding using her quirk, attempting to be normal, with her only real ambition in life to leave as little of an impact as possible and here she was…and she had an audience. Rin felt her mouth go dry, or rather drier. The trip there had already left her feeling as if she'd been trying to eat sandpaper.

Ahead of her she saw a man break away from a couple of police officers and a few people in ridiculous enough clothing so that it was obvious they were probably pro heroes. The man was wearing work clothes and a trench coat. Apart from that he looked…ordinary…clean cut, average build, somewhat attractive in a normal, almost dull kind of way. He approached, casting a wary look at her.

"Tsukauchi! Glad you could make it!" All Might said loudly before leaving her side and meeting the man halfway. In other circumstances, she might have felt relief at his absence, but it left her exposed and she could feel eyes on her; questioning, confused, curious eyes.

They were far enough away that she couldn't clearly hear the conversation All Might was having, but she nevertheless was able to get a pretty good impression of the tone of the conversation. The man, who she decided was probably the sort of policeman who was high enough in the ranks to not need a uniform was wearing an expression similar to what Kaiya wore when she was chastising her. She did catch the tail end of their talk when the officer rose his voice.

"-too reckless…I know your opinions about priority and heroism, but we have these laws for a reason!"

All Might said something she couldn't hear in response. The man sighed, cast her a brief look and then after a moment his frustration turned to weariness.

"I'm not making any promises," he said before heading back to the small group. All Might turned back to her, his hands resting on his hips, his smile in place as if it had never faltered earlier.

"Come Miss Hajime! No time to waste!"

Rin felt a bitterness settle into her stomach. She had a moment where she seriously considered making a run for it; simply ducking under the tape the police had put up and vanishing into the crowd of onlookers.

_'No, that doesn't work with All Might, remember?' _offered the infuriatingly logical portion of her brain.

She thought her legs weren't going to comply when she tried to move forward, but after a couple of attempts, she managed to propel herself towards All Might and the police. She stopped just short of the small group, purposefully ignoring All Might's smile as she tried to follow the conversation, despite the intermittent screaming and cursing that was dominating her internal thoughts.

"-If we remove the oxygen from much of the building, the fire should die down enough so that we can enter carefully and get to the people who are trapped inside," the detective was saying, Tsukauchi…that's what All Might had called him.

Detective Tsukauchi was the one who was doing most of the speaking. He looked worried and he didn't look especially happy about the situation. In this, at least, she could relate. There was another police officer who offered occasional comments and there were a couple of pro heroes, all of whom were listening carefully, apart from one, who made Rin nervous, or more nervous…because as the detective was speaking, she could feel his eyes on her.

Rin herself said nothing and was standing in a way that was giving off the opposite of confidence; slouching, with her arms crossed so tightly that her chest ached, and her teeth and legs clenched to avoid any excess shaking. She was basically attempting to tuck into herself as much as possible and was far too overwhelmed to rectify this, even as she was aware that she was doing it.

"Wait, so…she doesn't have a hero license?" This came from the pro who had been staring at her.

"A problem for sure," Tsukauchi said after a moment of hesitation. There was a slight edge in his voice, but as he continued it faded a bit. "But there have been precedents and the plan does seem pretty low risk to her."

"I don't think we have a choice; we need to do something fast. If she can remove the oxygen and you and All Might think she can do it from a safe distance, I say we do it and deal with the paperwork later," the other officer said.

"Agreed," another pro said. "We can argue about the law all day, but there isn't going to be a building left if we don't act soon."

During those intervals when she was able to pay attention to the words being said, she began to feel mounting unease. Rin had never received professional training for her quirk, but when it had manifested, she _had_ been coached rather extensively by her father and this coaching had lasted up until his arrest when she was thirteen. The lessons had been harsh and often painful. When she didn't do what he wanted, he'd punish her by using his own quirk on her. He often did this when she wasn't expecting it and had once even removed the oxygen from her bedroom while she was sleeping. Even Kaiya didn't hear much about her childhood, mainly because she tried very hard not to think about it.

Her father had by no means been a good teacher and had neglected any insights into using her quirk safely, or in any way that didn't involve its worse possible applications. Nevertheless, she still managed to get a pretty good handle on what her quirk was capable of. After her father's arrest, she didn't use it very much, but it wasn't because she didn't know how.

She hadn't stopped to think about what All Might exactly wanted her to do. She hadn't stopped to think about much of anything, really. Still, even allowing for the fact that she was only picking up snippets of what was being said by the officers and the pros, it was enough to know that_ this_ was a bad plan. As far as she was concerned, any plan involving her using her quirk was, but in this case, it was a bad plan because it wouldn't work.

"Are you completely stupid," she heard a voice say…before realizing it was her own. The only person in the small group that didn't react was All Might himself, even though she was directing the statement at him. The detective also had a much milder reaction then the other police officer and the pro heroes, who's expressions ranged from surprised to affronted.

"You have concerns, Miss Hajime?" All Might said before anyone else could interject. Suddenly everyone's attention was on her.

"I can't just…I mean I don't…" she stammered for a moment, trying to force the words out. "I can't just take the oxygen from the building; I mean I could…maybe…I've never done an area that large but…I mean even if I can…I can't do that!" _God why were words so hard!?_

"What?" The other officer said after a moment.

"You're worried about your ability to use your quirk at this scale?" All Might attempted.

"No, you idiot," she said before she could stop herself. "I can't just remove the oxygen from the whole building if there are people in there…the people will suffocate before the fire does!"

Again, it was difficult to observe a significant change to All Might's indecipherable expression. His heavily shadowed eyes were on her, but it was impossible to know what he was thinking. The detective appeared visibly frustrated by the information, however.

XXX

"What you're saying is there is no safe way to approach the situation," Detective Tsukauchi said finally. Unlike his friend, Tsukauchi was not especially impulsive. He was aware that the building was burning and that they didn't have much time to stand around, but he felt that a little planning could save time and lives later, and he believed that the laws were, for the most part there for a reason. It wasn't that All Might didn't believe in this, he just had a hierarchy of priorities that often put the law slightly below heroism in general…especially when it came to paperwork. Still, surely even he wouldn't ask a civilian to go into a burning building. His friend had a bad habit of not considering his own safety, but he did consider the safety of others.

After a moment the other police officer spoke.

"Are we…are we still going through with this plan?"

Tsukauchi frowned and turned to All Might, who hadn't yet spoken.

"All Might…"

"No," All Might said finally. "Tsukauchi is right. It's too dangerous. I'll go in myself," he said before looking towards the theater.

Tsukauchi felt a mixture of relief and concern, because while he was completely baffled by All Might's decision to bring this random young woman into a high risk situation, not using her did mean that they were back at square one, with All Might, his friend, heading into a situation that he felt had been designed to lure the hero in. He could only hope that this villain was underestimating the man, as so many had done before.

"You may want to take this one a little slower," Tsukauchi said out of the corner of his mouth to All Might. "I know it isn't a strength of yours," he added with a worried smile.

Before the older man could answer, however, the girl, Rin, who had stood in a state of discomfort before her outburst, pushed past a pro who seemed to be attempting to escort her towards the rest of the civilians and stopped in front of them, fuming.

"Hey! Are you fucking kidding me?" she directed at All Might. To the casual onlooker, his smile didn't waver. Tsukauchi had gotten a little better at accurately reading his friend's expressions, however, even in this form and could pick up the slight bewilderment.

"Sorry?"

"You…this…we flew…we're five miles away from my apartment!"

"Er," he started, before being interrupted again.

"I don't have my keys, or my wallet…you just… what am I supposed to do…walk all the way back because you apparently had no plan and don't know how fire works!?"

The other officer, who had watched the exchange decided to interject at that moment.

"It would be easier with her help. The employee access area at the back of the theater seems less effected then the main entrance. Perhaps she could just clear a path to the center?"

Tsukauchi looked sideways at All Might, who seemed to be thinking this over.

"Miss Hajime," he said finally, turning back to the young woman. "Are you certain you wish to do this?"

She didn't look sure, in fact, at his question a look of terror mingled with her rage for a moment and she swallowed hard before the anger came back in full. It was unclear as to what exactly was driving Rin Hajime forward. If it was indeed just not having the keys to her apartment, then her own priorities were even more baffling then All Might's. It was far more evident what was driving All Might himself to changing his mind however as beneath his booming confident voice was a hint of admiration.

"All Might, asking a civilian to go into a burning building is no longer just skirting the law, at the very least there are going to be-"

"I'll take responsibility," All Might interrupted. Tsukauchi frowned and rubbed at his forehead, not least because he knew at this point there was no arguing it.

All Might had many excellent qualities, but he could also be infuriatingly stubborn sometimes. He was also hopelessly idealistic, which was, for the most part, a good thing. If he hadn't been, then the symbol of peace would have never existed. It could be troublesome as a law enforcer though. After a moment, the detective sighed, defeated.

"Fine, but you're doing your _own_ paperwork on this one," he said.

XXX

Rin wasn't a stranger to difficult situations, although she had been able to put time and careful selective repression between her and some of those situations. One important factor, however, was that in every previous high stress situation Rin had been in, she either hadn't had time to think…or hadn't had a choice. Having both was proving to be a great hindrance.

The trip there and the conversation between the officers and pro heroes hadn't taken very long, minutes at best, although parts of it had felt like it had taken longer. Even so, she hadn't had much time to process anything because she had been too overwhelmed. Even her initial decision at the apartment and her anger had been a result of acting on her nerves.

Now as they prepared to enter the building, she was starting to come down a little. Oblivious to Tsukauchi's own musings, she was a bit unclear herself as to why she'd even decided to do this in the first place. Guilt? Temporary insanity? Some misplaced desire to prove something? Probably not because of her keys.

There were no firetrucks or ambulances, although apparently both were on their way. Because of this they didn't have proper equipment. In the brief time they'd had before her and All Might arrived, the police managed to come up with a couple of small respiratory masks of the sort that had a built-in air filter.

Detective Tsukauchi gave her one and it reminded her that in addition to forgetting her keys, wallet and any sort of proper attire, as she was essentially wearing loungewear under her jacket, she had also completely failed to bring her inhaler. She eyed the mask gloomily before pulling it over her head so that it was hanging around her neck.

He handed one to All Might as well, in addition to a radio, saying something quietly to him as the big hero stored both on his belt.

"Miss Hajime," All Might said, after the detective broke away. "When we enter the building, I must insist that you stay near me at all times," Rin eyed him warily as he continued. "If at any point things grow too dangerous, we'll exit at once."

When she didn't answer, All Might leaned forward slightly, removing one hand from his hip and cupping it against his ear with an exaggerated flourish. Rin leaned back and eyed him with exasperation.

"Come now, Miss Hajime. A simple 'Yes, All Might,' would make me feel a lot better!"

"Yes, fine," she said through slightly gritted teeth.

"Good enough!" he said as he straightened again. "Now please stand back while I get the door!"

Rin scowled, but did take a few steps back as All Might 'got the door.' This involved removing it entirely from its hinges.

"I must be out of my mind," Rin mumbled to herself. The detective caught Rin slightly off guard by giving her an encouraging smile.

"Don't worry, he might be a bit reckless at times, but if there's anyone in the world I would confidently follow into a burning building, it's All Might," he said. His smile dropped back into a more professional expression as he turned back to the large hero. "Radio when you think you've cleared a safe enough path and I'll send people in to help you with the rescue."

"Got it!" All Might said with a thumbs up, before setting the door aside and eyeing the interior briefly. He nodded and motioned for her to follow.

The side door entered a tearoom on the bottom floor of the theater. The air was thick, but not unbreathable as the actual fire had yet to spread to this portion of the building. There were cups and one or two half eaten pastries sitting on the sleek modern tables, showing that this room had most likely been evacuated shortly after the fire broke out. In normal circumstances it might have been a cheerful place to sit and have a cup of tea, but because of the silence, broken up only by unsettling creaking as the rest of the building corroded above and around it and a rushing sound that could have just been the wind, but probably wasn't, the cheerful effect of the green wallpaper and framed images of a cutesy tea mascot offered little comfort.

There was a glass door leading to the rest of the theater. The hallway beyond was dark and filled with smoke. All Might touched the handle and then hissed below his breath, before pulling his hand away.

"Looks like things are going to heat up beyond this point. Ready?" All Might said.

"Let's just…get this over with," Rin replied, trying to push down the fear and uncertainty threatening to rush through her and paralyze her body. She'd deal with it later, after this was over, she could go home and drink and have a slow mental breakdown in the comfort of her own home. For now, she'd attempt to keep the terror in a little ball off to the side somewhere and just…try not to think about it.

"I always find a positive attitude and a smile do wonders for settling your nerves!" All Might said cheerfully while brandishing a stunning smile. Rin returned it with a scowl. "But I suppose we all deal with things in our own ways," he added charitably. "Anyways, you're up!"

Forgetting her annoyance for a moment Rin frowned as the big hero stepped out of the way of the door. As she approached it, she was painfully aware of All Might standing nearby, eyeing her patiently and still wearing that stupid smile. She started to hold her breath and then shivered a little.

"Go…over there," she said to the big hero. He tilted his head slightly.

"Hmm?"

"Further back," she said with some frustration. After a moment where it seemed as if he might question this, he gave her a thumbs up.

"Sure thing!" he said before moving a little further back. The man did everything with embellished flourishes. Even standing still, it looked like he was posing. Rin had seen him posturing on television before, but part of her assumed that it was some stupid overblown act for the camera. It seemed absurd to her that he found this behavior acceptable in a burning building with only her for company.

She tried to put this at the back of her head as she took a breath and held it. She also put her hands in front of her with her fingers out. This gesture was not necessary in order to use her abilities but helped if she was trying to be more precise.

She could feel the air in the room beyond, low enough so that breathing would be more difficult, but present enough to feed the flames that weren't visible from her vantage point. She started to remove it carefully, sucking it through the cracks of the door. First, she took the air from in front of the door, then a few feet into the hallway beyond and then further down. She stopped there because she couldn't hold her breath anymore. Before she gave in, however she dumped the oxygen into the room they were in. Too much oxygen in one place could cause its own problems, but the side door was open and the air in the room had already been a bit stale, so it more or less filled the corners of the space with little trouble.

She swallowed down a few breaths of air, feeling a worryingly familiar weight on her chest as she did. It was still minor at this point, but she was already regretting the lack of her inhaler.

"Amazing," All Might said as he approached. "I can see your quirk has remarkable potential. How does it work exactly?" Rin ignored the compliment. Like the rest of him, it felt fake to her. Her quirk could be powerful, but flashy it was not. At best the only notable change from before was that the space they were in was slightly more habitable. He couldn't have noticed that. Still, as she eyed him gloomily, she caught something in his expression before he gave up on an answer from her and turned back towards the door.

_He's smarter than he looks, _she thought. She felt vaguely uneasy about this revelation. His behavior had been mostly ridiculous since they left her apartment. And she had to admit, especially with the more pressing concerns of the last twenty minutes or so, she had nearly forgotten to be afraid of him.

She was snapped out of these thoughts when the door made a terrible noise as All Might pushed it open. Like the side door, this one had also clearly been locked. He stepped back, covering his mouth and nose with his arm as he did.

"I doubt the police or evacuees sealed these doors," he said after clearing his throat. "Let's proceed cautiously!"

He was implying, what? That someone had willfully locked the doors in a burning building? Why? This was yet another thing she hadn't had time to consider. There had been a couple of odd attacks in the city over the last couple of weeks. It hadn't occurred to her that this might be one of them.

She could feel the oxygen slipping back into the hallway as she took a moment to place the mask the detective had given her over her mouth, for whatever good it did.

"I'm certain the entrance is ahead. There should be a way to get to the stage from there," he said.

The corridor was narrow and dull, covered in framed photographs of various kabuki plays. As it began to open into a larger area, she could feel the air growing thick again. As if to confirm this, she heard All Might half cough, half clear his throat, before removing his own mask from his belt. Instead of pulling it over his head, he just held it up to his mouth and nose. Having been focusing on breathing slowly herself, she nearly ran into him as he stopped.

He eyed her briefly before lowering the mask again and proceeding slowly. As she followed, she began to understand the reality of being in a building that was on fire. The rushing from before grew louder, the air grew thick and was accompanied by a sharp chemical smell that made breathing what little oxygen there was unpleasant, and the temperature rose to the point where she found herself soaked in sweat after a few seconds.

The room beyond the hall did indeed look like an entrance. There were two levels, with the top level being open with a balcony that overlooked the room below. Both were in bad shape. Smoke made it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead, but it was obvious that there was debris everywhere and that most of it had come from above. The second level was an inferno. Rin stumbled backwards as she was hit by a blast of even more intense heat as a banner that had been hanging overhead shifted and fell to the floor below. She could vaguely make out the shape of All Might as he turned to look at her.

"Are you all right?" he asked, sounding slightly winded himself. Apparently even the Symbol of Peace was finding these breathing conditions slightly difficult.

It was difficult to hear anything over that heavy roaring sound, including him, even though he was so damn loud. But Rin could almost imagine she could hear voices, screaming, shouting…so indistinct that it would be impossible to tell if she were hearing anything at all. She shivered.

"Just…get out of the way," she finally croaked out before forcing herself to approach the room again.

"Try to clear the room near those doors," he said as he complied.

Rin took as deep a breath as she could in the circumstances and held it. This time when she activated her quirk, she did so without much of the care she'd employed the previous time, pulling the oxygen from the doors beneath the balcony and the balcony itself as quickly as possible. She wouldn't be able to hold her breath long enough to do it any slower. The effect was more apparent as the flames seemed to be sucked out of existence, almost as if the world were being rewound.

She was considering where to put it so it wouldn't just flow back, when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye on the upper level. It was still difficult to see, even with much of the fire being stifled, but she thought she saw a shadow detach from one corner. She lost sight of it as something creaked and then watched in horror as a large portion of the balcony separated from the wall. Startled, she sucked in a breath of air and for one terrible moment everything seemed to be both sharpened and happening in slow motion as the piece of balcony fell and the oxygen flooded back over the dying embers, causing them to explode back into life. She braced herself against the inevitable heat and pain.

Instead, she felt a brief jolt, not unlike the feeling of one's stomach dropping while plunging down a steep fall and she found herself on the far side of room, opposite to where they'd entered, with All Might between her and the bulk of the heat. She nearly lost her balance as he withdrew a massive hand from her back before she'd even had time to process that it was there.

"That was close," he said after a moment through gritted teeth, still managing to sound cheerful despite the fact that they had nearly been crushed by a flaming partition. As he rose to his full height again, she did notice that his smile appeared to be more of a grimace at this point, however. "Whatever you did…the fire is worse than before…"

He was right, not only was it worse, but the sudden burst of oxygen and flame had caused much of the upper floor to come down, blocking the far hallway. He appeared to think for a moment and then pushed past her to a door that connected to a giftshop. The door gave way to minimal force.

"In here," he said. She saw no reason to argue. The air in the small room wasn't a lot better than the rest of the building and she could hear a roaring sound from above, but for now it was at least not on fire.

"I didn't mean…I didn't do anything, I just…" Rin started with some frustration, realizing that she sounded as if she was being defensive, which was foolish. Because she'd fucked up with her quirk, their only safe exit was blocked, and the fire was spreading faster. Now was not the time to make excuses. Still, she felt compelled to add; "I thought I saw someone on the balcony."

He turned to look behind him, scanning the upper floor. Or she assumed that was what he was doing. It was hard to tell with the deep shadows in his eyes.

"My current concern is finding a way to get to the people who are trapped," he said after a pause, perhaps a bit of frustration entering his voice. As Rin eyed the room beyond, she realized she was feeling angry again. It didn't take much reflection to realize that this time she was feeling angry at herself, however. "The doors to the main stage are too unstable now…even if you can clear…"

"I need somewhere to dump the oxygen," she interrupted him, panting slightly as she tried to ignore the ever-increasing pressure in her chest. "I can't use my quirk without holding my breath…I couldn't hold my breath long enough to keep…the oxygen away from the fire."

"You have to hold your breath to use your quirk?" he said. She glared at him. "Nothing! That's unique!" he added quickly. "Hmm, Stay put for a second, I'm going to have a look around," he said. Before she could say anything, he pushed back into the smoke of the fire.

XXX

As All Might headed back into the main part of the building, he tried to ignore the heat, the growing pain in his side and the ever-pressing urge to cough. He was going to pay for this later. The fire was indeed worse, but it was also still mostly overhead. This meant that the floor below was traversable, but also that parts of the upper floors were beginning to crumble.

Also, because the fire had been revived by the sudden burst of oxygen, the balcony above the doors into the entrance of the stage and the doors themselves were decaying fast. Even if he did get them open, it would be too dangerous to try to get people out through there and now that the hallway they'd come in through was blocked, they'd have nowhere to go.

_'Someone on the balcony,' _He thought and eyed it warily. He couldn't see anything, but in the current conditions that wasn't surprising. He'd worry about that later. Right now, he needed to find a way to reach the people still trapped inside.

He covered his face and after a brief look around, found an information desk near one of the walls. All Might pushed carefully past the bit of balcony that had fallen and approached it, finding what he was looking for on display. There were information pamphlets on the theater, complete with a helpful map on the back to inform theatergoers of seating numbers and the locations of the tearoom, bar and giftshop. Thankfully, there were a handful that hadn't been singed. He pulled out one and eyed it briefly, before turning back towards the giftshop while coughing a little into the small mask Tsukauchi had given him.

As he passed under the balcony again, he felt something wet hit the side of his face, like the first few raindrops before a storm.

He frowned and wiped at the moisture with the back of the hand he was holding the pamphlet in. Even in the smoke, the stark crimson color stood out against his skin. Blood…not his.

Before he had time to process this, he was overcome with an odd, extremely unpleasant feeling, as if every inch of his body and everything inside of it had suddenly turned against him. The closest he'd come to the sensation had been shortly after his injury, when multiple organs had been damaged and parts of him had been in danger of literally falling out through the hole in his stomach. Back then he had still forced himself to keep fighting, even as he lost blood and possibly even broken pieces of lung, stomach and intestine.

All Might had always had some level of self-control. It was necessary to maintain the image of the symbol of peace even as he was giving up everything to do so. It had been the driving force of his easy mastery of One for All. After his body started to wither, however self-control became a necessity as he forced his constantly weakening body into his hero form over and over and held it for as long as he could manage…sometimes longer. He had grown accustom to pushing his body past the pain and fatigue, both of which were just his default state of being now. This situation was no different and his reaction to it had little to do with rational thought.

_No, _came an internal voice, as he fought against the sensation in the same way someone might fight off a sneeze. There was brief resistance and then it was gone along with the pressure and the feeling like his insides were being squeezed. He coughed, tasting iron and moving his tongue over the roof of his mouth to stave off the immediate desire to vomit and the more worrying compulsion to transform back into his weaker form.

It took several seconds for this to pass. When it finally did, he eyed the balcony again and perhaps there was a shape detaching from one of the pillars, but it was hard to tell. He pulled himself together as best as he could in the circumstances, as he stumbled forward through the room and back towards where Rin was waiting.

When he returned, Rin was standing where he had left her. She had her arms crossed and was almost huddled against one of the walls. He forgot his own weariness for a moment as he felt a wave of instant frustration with himself. The building was still full of panicking civilians, and all he had managed to do so far was endanger one more.

He replaced the broken door as he entered, and she straightened a little. She'd been wearing the respiratory mask since they'd left the tearoom, so only her eyes were visible. He'd noticed in the park earlier that day that her eyes were so dark they were nearly black. Right now, it was difficult to read much of an expression in them.

"There's an emergency exit nearby. The only one as a matter of fact, which seems a tad unsafe, if you ask me!" he said, wiping a few beads of sweat from his face and regaining some of his composure from before.

He wasn't used to planning extensively while performing hero work, given his habit for reacting before his brain could interject. This situation required a little extra effort, however. Unlike Rin, he had paid pretty close attention to Tsukauchi's briefing, as well as all of the details that might be pertinent for safely navigating the building. Tsukauchi had said the fire had been started on the second floor, presumably in one of the side rooms since it was still believed that the stage area at the center of the building wasn't on fire…at least according to those frantic people who had managed to escape before the doors had been locked.

Naturally this meant that both upper floors were a no go. The second floor was on fire and the third floor was most likely completely unstable due to the floor below it being on fire. That left the floor they were on, which had three exits, two of which were now cut off and a stairwell that went to a basement level that had no exits. Their way out seemed fairly obvious. As for his way into the stage area? If the actual doorways were unstable, he could always make more.

That left Rin. He wouldn't blame her if she didn't wish to continue to use her quirk after what happened in the entrance, but as much as he was deeply regretting the fact, he needed her. And at this point it wasn't just because he needed a safe exit in which to extract the people trapped inside the building, but because he could feel his time in his hero form running out. Whatever had happened a moment before under the balcony had shortened it. He'd been in burning buildings before and breathing in a burning building was hard enough for someone with youth and two healthy lungs. He had neither.

"You said your quirk moves oxygen from one place to another. When you used it before, you moved it into the room we were in, correct?" He said.

"Er, yes…" she said after a measured pause.

"Can you do it again?"

She nodded, but looked uncertain, clearly beginning to lose whatever motivation had propelled her into coming with him to begin with. All he could do was be himself. Even if his present company found himself infuriating, at least annoyance was better than fear.

"Fear not! We'll be out of here in no time!" he said as he brandished a huge smile. "I have faith in you Miss Hajime, you're doing great!" _And if staying away from you is indeed your wish and is the only way to make this up to you, I'll do it, _he added to himself.

XXX

Rin stepped towards the door feeling exhausted. She had been trying not to wheeze into her mask for the last couple of minutes. She was beginning to accept the fact that a full blown asthma attack was going to fill her immediate future and all she could do was hope that she would be able to avoid it while also being trapped in a burning building. Because of this, the prospect of holding her breath for any length of time was not an attractive one. Nevertheless, she did so. She didn't really have much of a choice.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. She probably did have a choice. But she was frustrated. She couldn't completely process what it was she was feeling in the circumstances, but one thing she knew for sure was that if she did stop at this point, her frustration with herself would only increase.

Rin pulled her mask off and reached out with her left hand, her fingers outstretched, feeling her lungs ache and the pressure on her chest increase as she once again activated her quirk. Like the previous time, she was far less careful, sucking the oxygen towards the doorway. This time she closed her eyes and covered her mouth and nose with her right hand, forcing herself to keep from breathing even as it became unbearable.

Outside of the small giftshop, selling it's paper masks and t-shirts the flames died down once more. As the air left the entryway the smoke itself also began to disperse. She was careful to keep it to just that room and the hallway beside it, avoiding pulling oxygen from beyond that.

"Easy," she heard from behind her. She jumped, unaware that All Might had approached. His voice had dropped back into more normal tones. "That's enough Miss Hajime, I wouldn't want you to overdo it."

Rin stepped back from him and the door, taking a breath. It was only a minor improvement however, as it felt like she was breathing through a straw.

He paused for a few moments, possibly waiting for her to catch her breath, or perhaps in order to ensure the fire was out before reintroducing oxygen into the room.

"Stay close," All Might said as he removed the door again.

She followed him as he headed towards the hallway opposite of the side they entered on. It was in far worse shape. Rin could see that the ceiling was coming down at the far end of the corridor and the hallway itself was blocked in many places. All Might lifted some of this debris and carefully set it aside. True to what he had said, she could see the faint red light above an emergency exit. Near that was a stairwell. Because of her quirk both were now accessible.

XXX

Because it was an emergency exit, it would be as easy as pushing it open, which All Might did. Whoever had locked the other doors wouldn't have had much success with this one. There was a moment of cool fresh air. He eyed Rin, who had replaced the mask again.

"Through here, Miss Hajime," he said cheerfully.

She eyed the doorway briefly before turning her weary eyes back to him.

"This goes outside," she said simply. She sounded tired and slightly winded, as if she were still trying to catch her breath.

"Yes! I have a plan!" he responded. She seemed too tired to argue this and ducked under his arm, stepping into the cool autumn air.

"Thank you for your assistance! I'll take it from here!" She gave him a vaguely bewildered look but was unable to react much beyond that before he shut the door behind her. There was a very definite latching noise as the door's automatic locks fell into place. It might be open from the inside, but from the outside it didn't even have a handle. All Might headed back into the hall towards the stairwell.

According to the map, the basement had no exits and very little of note in it but a bathroom, and extensive storage space for theater supplies and costumes. But and this was important, it would have to run under the stage area, and even more importantly, would not be on fire. Generally, he tried to avoid structural damage as much as possible. With a little precision however, he could break through to the upper level with no danger of upsetting the building's already tenuous structure and get the civilians out safely.

"Tsukauchi," he said as he pulled his radio from his belt and pushed into the basement area.

"All Might," the man answered. "What happened? Have you cleared a safe path?"

"Almost, there's an emergency exit on the other side of the building," he said as he eyed the map and moved towards the center of the room. "I need you to get as many officers and pros over there as you can."

"All Might, that side of the building is on fire…we avoided that exit…"

"It's less on fire now! Sorry, my friend, I need to break the ceiling a bit."

"Break the…wait..." whatever else he was going to say was drowned out as All Might sent a short sharp punch upwards. His fist didn't contact the ceiling itself, but it burst inward nevertheless from the shear force of his punch.

XXX

The people who were trapped inside the Ukiyo-za were huddled near the stage at the ground floor. The fire had indeed begun on the second floor, although exactly where it started was unclear. Possibly in the restaurant, or the shrine room or the lobby. Some would muse later that it might have started in multiple places simultaneously.

The people stuck in the theater had found themselves locked inside shortly after the play had begun. The room they were in had fire deterrents, but they were trivial in the face of the sheer force at which the fire had torn through the upper levels of the building, most of which was made of wood.

The balcony seats on the second and third floor caught fire first and were abandoned as some didn't even bother to use the stairs as they jumped to the lower level. For a while they had screamed and pounded on the doors, but as time passed this began to cease, as the air in the room grew thin and the heat grew more intense.

One civilian, a young man named Kenzou, who had been there on a first date that hadn't been going very well even before the building had caught fire, had spent the last five minutes or so sitting in one of the seats. He'd collapsed into it after he and many others had tried to get the doors open before ultimately giving up partly out of exhaustion and partly because the doors had become so unbearably hot that it was clear that even if they did manage to open them, the room on the other side was going to be even more deadly then the room they were in.

He could hear that some people were still shouting for help or trying to find a way out and he was amazed that they still had the energy. It was all he could do to not fall asleep.

Kenzou was not an exceptional young man. He had a low paying job in the post office, a position he had acquired mainly due to his ability to produce a weak form of adhesive from his finger tips...not strong enough to be of any use apart from say, sticking stamps to envelopes and labels to boxes...oh and making dating difficult because girls didn't seem to respond very well to the fact that his hands were always a bit sticky if he didn't constantly wash them.

This theater outing was the most exceptional thing to happened

The last thought he had, before the stage floor burst upwards was to resent the fact that he had paid so much for the seats up in the balcony, when the seat he was in seemed to be perfectly adequate and wouldn't have set him back two paychecks. And then All Might was there.

XXX

By the time the police and the other pros were aiding in the rescue, ambulances began to roll in. As far as anyone could tell, there were no casualties, although some of the people inside the building were in critical condition because of the smoke and others had minor to severe burns.

The people who were in less terrible shape began to talk excitedly as they recovered in the fresh air and waited to be checked on by medics. Some of them were talking to the press, who like ants to a picnic had turned up at some point, recounting the story of All Might bursting through the floor and carrying many of the people who couldn't stand or walk back out.

All Might himself was purposefully trying to avoid the press for the time being. He'd done most of hands on rescuing himself, as he could carry multiple people at once. Some had been able to walk out themselves and the police had mostly helped to direct them through the makeshift path, up the stairs and through the emergency exit, which was propped open. They'd managed to evacuate the building before the flames had moved back into the space Rin had cleared.

Once the building was clear, All Might allowed himself a moment when he judged that attention was off of him. His lung hurt, his side hurt, and every breath felt sharp and unpleasant, as if he'd caught a bad chest cold. How much time did he have left? It should be a little over an hour and a half at least, but he felt it was probably closer to forty minutes and that was if he pushed himself.

He straightened and watched as the firetrucks finally began to role in. He would have to. He wasn't done yet. Someone else had been inside the building. He'd briefly filled Tsukauchi in on this, leaving out the part where he had…fought off an attack? He wasn't sure exactly what it had been, but he couldn't worry about it now and he didn't want to worry the other man either. At his warning the younger man had immediately ordered those officers not aiding in the rescue to keep a lookout at other exits.

All Mights shadowed eyes drifted from the emergency vehicles to the dark shape of his neighbor, sitting on a bench near a large advert for the degrading theater behind him, her respiratory mask cast aside. She was resting her head in her hand.

He still had work to do, but it could wait for a moment.

XXX

This was different from the attacks she sometimes had in the early morning. Those attacks weren't because of her asthma, although they probably didn't do it any favors and it was sometimes difficult to tell when one began and the other ended, but after years of having them on and off, she'd come to terms with the fact that those incidents were more mental than physical.

Actual asthma attacks were different. They were also different from what she'd experienced when her father used his quirk on her. Right now, however, as far as she was concerned the differences in all these things were minuscule. She couldn't breathe. It was hard to weigh the intricacies of the various ways in which she hadn't been able to breath throughout her lifetime to decide which was worse, when her lungs were refusing to do what they were supposed to.

"Miss Hajime is here!"

_'God, not him…not now.'_

She was only vaguely aware of what was going on around her as she wheezed and fought against the darkness that was welling up as her brain threatened to lose consciousness. Because of this she didn't notice All Might as he approached until he spoke and even then, his voice almost had a strange echoing quality. Oblivious to her internal thoughts, he continued.

"Thanks to your efforts the theater has been evacuated and…uh are you all right? Miss Hajime?"

"Please…just…" she started, between gasps of air.

She felt a change in the air and her world was filled with red and blue and white as All Might knelt in front of her.

"Miss Hajime! Rin!" His voice once again sounded strange and far away. Had he used her first name? No, she must be more fucked up then she thought.

"Can't breathe…" she said finally. "…my inhaler," she added. There was a pause where she could only hear her own breathing.

"Inhaler?" All Might said in response. "You have asthma? Shit!"

Even as she was gasping for air, she was able to dwell briefly on the fact that it was extremely weird to hear All Might curse for some reason. He stood up and moved out of her vision. After a couple of seconds, she raised her head a bit. He was a couple of feet away eyeing the ambulances that were tending to the victims of the fire. They clearly had their work cut out of them, with hundreds still waiting to be looked at.

When he turned back towards her his expression was odd, or rather, it wasn't odd. His smile was odd, his expression now was more like his surprise in the coffee shop or the way he had looked in her apartment. It made him look more human.

He approached her again.

"I apologize Miss Hajime," he said, before scooping her up in his arms. Rin didn't have much strength to resist, but she nevertheless made a halfhearted attempt. It didn't do her any good. She could tell that even at her best, it wouldn't have done her any good.

"Wait…" was all she managed before she was once again subject to a rush of wind and vertigo. This time she couldn't even shout because she didn't have the air in which to do so. She gritted her teeth and fought against the even more persistent desire to faint.

_At this point it would be an improvement, _her mind offered.

She conceded and allowed herself to drift into a state of semi consciousness.


	10. There are Bad Days

Chapter Ten:

There are Bad Days…

"Miss Hajime…hey…" Rin returned to consciousness with reluctance. For a moment she was confused and could only process that her asthma was acting up. She fumbled beside her, expecting her bedside table and nearly fell off what turned out to be the couch in her living room. She was steadied and pushed gently back onto the couch. "Careful, you passed out!" came the booming voice of All Might.

_All Might…damn…so that wasn't a nightmare. _

She heard a brief, muffled cough before he spoke again. "The door was locked so I, er…opened it. I assure you I will pay for the damages. You mentioned an inhaler, be so kind as to impart it's whereabouts and I will retrieve it posthaste!"

Rin blinked and eyed the room wearily. The big hero was half kneeling beside her, looking strange in contrast to what should have been a normal, familiar and safe private space. This was a secondary thought however, as breathing was her most immediate problem and her aversion to the prospect of relying on All Might was slightly less than that of trying to sit up or move at all. She waved a hand vaguely.

"My bag…" her voice came out in a croak.

There was a change in the air as he left her side. Rin closed her eyes again and then frowned. She could feel the floor shake slightly as he walked around, hell she could hear items rattling gently on her coffee table and countertop. How did this man catch anyone off guard? Even if she were blind and deaf, she would be able to tell that he was there.

Then she remembered the park and the coffee shop. One moment she had been alone, the next moment he was just…there…as if he'd been standing there the whole time. Not to mention at the entrance of the theater. He'd moved both of them out of danger so quickly that her brain hadn't even been able to keep up, hadn't been able to register the fact that her body had moved at all until several seconds after it happened.

She'd once read somewhere that All Might could move so quickly that he couldn't be picked up by the human eye.

Rin's thoughts were broken up as All Might returned and brandished her inhaler in a massive hand. Rin took it and used it with as much desperation as she was willing to show in front of the man. After, she took several deep breaths.

_Did he say he broke my door? _Was her first thought as the heaviness in her chest began to dissipate. Rin pulled herself up with a groan and made a brief annoyed gesture to deter him from helping her.

She was once again struck by how strange the whole situation was. This was made most apparent by the fact that the silent film she had been watching when All Might had arrived was still paused on her television. For things to go from normal to…whatever the hell this was in so short a time was staggering.

Rin looked wearily at her front door. It wasn't removed entirely from the hinges like the doors at the theater, but it was standing ajar and there was a very definite sense of openness about it that suggested it wouldn't be closing anytime soon. This was mostly due to the fact that the wall the locks would have normally slid into was missing pieces of doorframe and the deadbolt and latch bolt themselves were still visibly sticking out of the faceplate.

"You had me worried for a moment, Miss Hajime," he said, some relief ebbing into his voice. "You should have told me you had asthma! I would have never suggested you enter a burning building if I'd known!"

"You broke my door," Rin said in response. In truth she wasn't all that worried about the door. Now that the weird disconnected feeling was starting to disperse and her inhaler was doing its job on her airways, there were a lot of other larger things that were more concerning to her. The door was just the easiest thing to focus on. Thinking about everything else was something she wanted to do by herself with alcohol…or something, anything that would ground her and force some sense back into the world…but probably alcohol.

"Yes," he said slowly. "The medics at the theater had their hands full and taking you to a hospital would have required time for an explanation. I thought the quickest way to help you would be to bring you back here…I would still recommend you see a medical professional."

She had a brief internal struggle. On the one hand he'd saved her life…maybe a couple of times depending on how bad her asthma would have gotten had he not intervened. On the other hand, she wouldn't have needed it if he'd never shown up to begin with. Everything would be normal, and she'd probably be in bed right now. She hadn't asked for any of this and the prospect of thanking him for it turned her stomach.

"Please...just leave," she said, her voice coming out in monotone.

"Miss Hajime, are you certain you're feeling…"

"Leave…please."

She hadn't looked at him in full since waking, possibly out of self-defense and still didn't as she spoke to him now. Instead she focused on the frozen image of the black and white silent film. She heard something like a sigh and was aware of the change in the air as he straightened.

"All right," he said. "I uh…thank you for your assistance and your bravery this evening." There was a brief groan from the floorboards as he shifted his weight and started for the door. He hesitated about halfway and Rin felt a wave of frustration as he turned towards her again.

XXX

Toshinori stifled a cough. He needed to get back to the theater while he still had time in his hero form. Still, there had been something on his mind since he'd become aware of who she was and since she'd already basically made him promise to stay away from her, he didn't feel as if he'd get another chance to say something. Earlier that day, she'd chastised him about apologizing, but that had been directed at Yagi and he felt she was still owed an apology from All Might. Well…that was the least she was owed.

"I…know now isn't the best time," he started, in what would wind up being a massive understatement, "but I wanted to apologize. I uh…I realize you must have gone through a lot after your father's arrest. I regret my part in any pain it has caused you. I know it doesn't mean much, but I'm sorry."

He wanted to say more, but words, which were generally not much of a problem for him, were proving difficult to formulate in the circumstances, so instead he bowed slightly. The room filled with silence, not a comfortable silence, or even an awkward silence, but the ringing deafening silence of the sort that falls before a bomb drops or a secret blade slices through the air.

He risked a look and immediately wished he hadn't. She had been avoiding his gaze…really for much of the evening. Now she was staring, and her expression was almost impossible to describe. It was if a lot of different feelings were trying to occupy her face all at once; anger, hatred and exasperation being chief among them. One thing was clear though; she didn't want his apology. True to what she'd said before, all she seemed to want for sure was for him to not be there.

"Right! Now is a horrible time! Sorry! Leaving!" he said quickly before heading towards the door and cursing to himself in process.

XXX

When All Might returned to the Ukiyo-za he joined the police and the pros as they did a sweep of the building, or what was left of it, while the firemen worked at putting the remainder of the fire out. All Might returned to the theater entrance once it was cleared and eyed the balcony again. The air was still stale and unpleasant, but the room was cleared of smoke and flame and the building itself was quickly becoming a ruin. When he was certain he wasn't being watched he stifled a cough into his sleeve. It looked as if there was no one left in the building. If anyone had escaped, they had done so without being noticed.

After a moment of consideration and with the knowledge that it was probably a bad idea, All Might jumped up to the upper floor. There was a moment when the wooden floorboards creaked and shifted beneath his feet, before settling. He straightened and ducked under a fallen bit of debris and moved a large piece of what had been a railing. It was hard to spot anything out of the ordinary when everything was so degraded, but he scanned the walkway carefully even so.

Among all the gray and soot and ash, there was a flash of white in the corner of his periphery. It was lying near a wall on the edge of the terrace. As he approached it, he saw that it was a mask, the same make as the others. Unlike the others it was broken in half. The writing on it was the same as the mask he'd received in the package sent to Might Tower; Strength.

As he eyed it, he felt the sudden urge to cough again, as his lung sent him an unpleasant reminder that he was standing in a building, breathing in soot and had been breathing in smoke for the last hour. He coughed in his hand and winced a little at the drop of crimson on his knuckle. He was out of time.

"Are you all right?" Toshinori resisted the urge to jump, appear alarmed, and especially to go into a full coughing fit and start spewing blood at the statement. The young pro he'd met at the Shibuya train station was stepping over some of the rubble and eyeing him from below.

"Ah!" he said with forced cheerfulness. "Young Sumitomo, you startled me!"

"Sorry, sometimes I activate my quirk without thinking," he said in response.

"Right, the shadow thing! Must be useful for stealth ops," All Might said as he took the pieces of mask carefully, no longer concerning himself with touching them with his bare hands.

"Not too useful for burning buildings unfortunately. I don't think I've been much help."

"I don't know about that!" All Might responded with a grunt as he dropped back to the lower floor. "People can help in a lot of different ways; your quirk may not fit in every situation, but the will to do something can be just as important."

"That's…nice of you to say. But I mean…you do so much…"

"Nonsense," All Might interrupted. He didn't want to be unkind, but he also needed this conversation to end as quickly as possible. "A lot of people helped out tonight. Now, if you wouldn't mind doing me a favor, this needs to be taken to an officer," he added as he handled the mask halves.

"Sure…uh what…"

"Evidence. You're wearing gloves, good. Don't handle it without them and make sure whoever you give it to doesn't touch it with their bare hands either," he said as Sumitomo took the pieces.

"Uh…you're holding it without gloves?"

"Ah! So I am!" he said cheerfully. "Thank you for pointing that out. From now on, make sure no one else does! I have to find Detective Tsukauchi," he said while turning away from the youthful pro and heading for the exit.

He found Naomasa outside of the theater. As he headed out of the stale air of the demolished building and into the cold autumn weather, he felt his chest heave slightly. His side was killing him. How many more minutes till he went back to his weak form? One? Two?

Naomasa eyed him as he approached. He had been talking to another officer.

"The building is clear," All Might said. "Whoever was in there is long gone."

The younger man nodded wearily and then examined him for a moment before speaking again.

"I appreciate all of the help. It's a shame about the building, but it could have been a lot worse. If you don't mind, could I have a few words with you in private," he added while dismissing the other officer.

"Of course," All Might said after a moment. He followed Naomasa as the man lead them away from the bulk of the crowd.

"Something wrong?" All Might said.

"No, I just thought you might like a ride home," he said with the hint of a smile once they were out of earshot. "You're starting to smoke."

"My friend, you are a lifesaver," All Might said gratefully.

XXX

Once they were alone, safely hidden inside Naomasa's tinted car, Toshinori released his hero form, giving in to a brief coughing fit in the process. He fought to catch his breath for a moment and was able at least to resist the impulse to hack up blood on Tsukauchi's car seat. He could tell that he was in for an unpleasant evening.

"Are you sure you don't want me to drop you off at a hospital or something?" Naomasa asked with some concern.

"Agh…no, I'll be all right," Toshinori said, as he leaned back. His hero suit was now hanging loosely over his skinny body.

"Still, it might not be a bad idea to at least have someone look at you. A lot of unpleasant stuff in the air in a chemical fire."

"I just need some rest," he responded while breathing in slowly. "Besides…I left my clothes behind in Might Tower…it would be pretty difficult to explain the suit."

And while this was true, Toshinori had to admit that he was probably making excuses. He had regular doctors appointments that he attended...for the most part, but ever since his injury, the thought of being in a hospital for any length of time frustrated him. It wasn't just the sterile walls or the restlessness of being stuck in a hospital bed when he could be doing something useful, but also that feeling of being helpless...weak...vulnerable. It didn't help that his body was so fucked up now that it was impossible to go into any medical establishment without being reminded of it multiple times. He didn't need to be told that his BMI was off. He had mirrors.

"I suppose," Naomasa said with a sideways look at his friend.

XXX

Seethe was standing outside of the abandoned office that had become a sort of unofficial base for the small group the mask man had…hired? Bribed? Whatever it was they were. He stepped out to smoke and ironically, get some fresh air. A few rooms on one of the upper floors were cleared out and made almost habitable, but the atmosphere was still one heavy in mildew, dust and rat droppings…and the company was not much better.

Kage and Petra were still working, so that had left him with the other two. His initial impression of the old man was that at first glance he would have easily passed as a kindly elderly gentleman one might see on the bus with his neat haircut, thin bifocal lenses and slightly tacky tweed blazers. After a few minutes in the man's company he began to give Seethe the creeps though. He had an odd smile and was always reading strange old books. He also had an annoyingly cloying voice, almost sweet and soft-spoken but in a way that rubbed you the wrong way. He'd introduced himself as Simon. It was unclear as to whether this was his real name, but given that the older man was clearly Japanese, it was probably not.

As for the girl, who was probably no older then seventeen or eighteen, well, as far as he could recall, she hadn't said anything. When the masked man was there, she tended to follow him around. When he wasn't there, it was almost like she shut down. She just sat with a strange faraway smile on her face. Being around both of them at the same time made Seethe's head creak after a while.

He looked up when he heard the sound of heels on the ground as Petra stomped towards him. Unlike on every previous occasion he'd seen her, she was a mess. Her usually carefully done up hair was undone and in tangles. Her clothing was disheveled, and she smelled of smoke and petroleum. She also had an almost hunted look in her eyes.

"So, you're back…how uh…how'd it go?" he asked. She glared at him in response.

"It was a fucking disaster," she said. "Give me one of those," she added as she pointed to his battered pack of cigarettes. He removed one and handed it to her quickly. When she took it, he noticed that one of her gloves was missing.

"Is uh, smoking a good idea with…well you know, you're quirk?"

"Shut up," she said in response as she put the cigarette in her mouth and pulled out a lighter. He winced a little when she lit it. For a moment he thought he saw the flame jump slightly, then it was gone, and he relaxed. "I see your job turned out being the easy one," she added after taking a long drag on the cigarette. "Couldn't have spread the explosives out a bit to give us more time?"

"Spread them out? I was in Might Tower…do you know how fast All Might is? I was lucky to get out without being seen!" She scoffed but didn't say anything further on the matter.

There was silence for a moment, and he resisted the urge to fill it. Instead it was broken when the front door opened. Seethe was the only one to turn as Simon eyed the two of them and smiled a toothy smile that twisted his deceptively friendly face in unpleasant ways.

"Evening," he said as he walked down the stairs in well-worn suede shoes. "I take it by your expression, that your outing at the theater was not a pleasant affair."

She scoffed again.

"I kept an eye on the news," Seethe said. "Some…interesting headlines…sounded like things were going how he wanted…what happened?" He added as he moved a little way away from the older man as candidly as he could. So much for enjoying some alone time.

"All Might happened, what else!?" she said. Seethe nodded wearily. He hadn't had much faith in the plan from the beginning to be honest. The idea of a world without All Might was an attractive one, but at the same time a small part of him cowered at the thought. The hero had been the symbol of peace throughout Seethe's entire lifetime. The idea of being the one to end that was just…too big. It gave him a stomachache. It occurred to him that as much as Kage terrified him, if staying on the man's good side meant continuing to go up against All Might, it might be safer to try and get out while he still could.

"Don't you know smoke is bad for your lungs."

Seethe jumped and nearly swallowed his cigarette. As if his dark thoughts had called him, Kage was standing nearby, his arms crossed. He hadn't seen or heard his approach.

"Uh, I guess…never really cared too much about it, though," he said after a moment, before dropping the remainder of his cigarette on the ground and stomping it out.

"Hah!" Petra said. This time, Seethe noticed that she too had been slightly shaken by his sudden appearance, but perhaps that had less to do with him and more to do with the current state of her nerves. "You want to know how it went, ask him! Or are you going to spout some nonsense about how things are going according to plan!"

"No," Kage said. "The plan failed." He followed this with silence.

"Right!" Petra said after a pause, perhaps losing some of her steam in the face of this simple admission.

"I expected him to rush in, but he was warned against it ahead of time. I expected him to go alone, but he went for help and…my quirk does not work on him."

"Shit," Seethe said. "So, All Might really is unbeatable."

"All Might is a man," Simon said from the stairway. "No man is invincible."

"Simon is right," Kage said. "There have been people who were immune to my power before...it had nothing to do with strength or invulnerability."

"Who were they?" Seethe asked, trying to keep the slight tinge of hope out of his voice.

"Oh no one. Quite unexceptional to be honest. A woman with particularly severe obsessive-compulsive tendencies and a young man whose most notable quality was that he spent several years in extensive rehab for alcoholism."

"So…you're saying All Might is…an obsessive-compulsive alcoholic?" Seethe said after a moment, trying to keep up, while also wondering if he should take up excessive drinking. It wouldn't be hard, given his current circumstances.

"…doubtful," Kage said after a long pause. "It more likely has to do with discipline."

"Discipline?"

"All Might is the number one hero. He's one of the most famous people in the country and he's been number one for a long time. And yet there aren't any scandals surrounding him, no stories about his personal life, relationships outside of his hero career…no one even knows his real name or what his quirk is. You think it's because he's just really good at keeping secrets?"

"…yes?" Seethe said. From the corner of his vision he saw Petra roll her eyes.

"Nah, tabloids would be all over him at the slight hint of a scandal…or a love life," Simon said from behind him, smiling his creepy smile.

"Invincible or not, the plan didn't work. I thought you said there weren't any pros in the city that could counter a chemical fire. Who was that girl?" Petra said.

"Not a pro," Kage said, coming out of his thoughts. "A civilian."

"Well she was a civilian who nearly killed me," she snapped. "I only stayed behind because you said you had things under control. I don't know what she did, but I felt like the life was being sucked out of my body! If I hadn't gotten off the second floor when I did…" she shivered. "It's not an experience I wish to repeat!"

"Like I said, she's not a pro. I don't know much about her other than that, but I'll look into her if it would make you feel better" Kage said. "All Might is just a man," he added to himself. "A Man with a very carefully crafted persona. No one can shine that brightly without it being a trick," he said the last in a near whisper.

XXX

After returning to his apartment and ensuring no one was around to see him in his hero suit, Toshinori bid Naomasa farewell with a bow. he had learned long ago that carrying anything of importance on him while he was doing hero work was a slight risk. It was too easy to lose things while he was flying over the city or during a particularly active tussle with a villain. Because of this he didn't carry his keys with him anymore unless he also had civilian clothes on him and he always had a spare hidden somewhere outside his front door. He'd starting doing this after the third or fourth time he'd had to break into his own house after misplacing his keys somewhere in the city.

Currently he was storing his spare key in the small mailbox that hung beside his apartment number. He grabbed for it with slightly shaky long fingers and unlocked his door. Once inside, and out of view of Naomasa or anyone, he braced himself on the wall and coughed, covering his mouth with his other hand. He tasted blood and felt the warm, wet sticky feeling as it coated his palm.

He felt horrible. Granted this was nothing new, but on top of pushing his hero form too far and the inevitable pain and unpleasantness that this caused his body as it shrank back into the withered mess it currently was, he almost felt like he had caught a bad cold. His throat hurt, his chest hurt, his eyes and head hurt, and he could have sworn he could still smell burning.

Feeling slightly lightheaded, he went to his kitchen and ran his hand under the sink for a moment, before grabbing a towel and wiping the remaining blood from his mouth and fingers. He poured himself a glass of water as well, but it didn't do much good apart from helping to wash the taste of iron out of his mouth. The cold hit his raw throat like a dagger and almost caused him to start coughing again. Sleep, what he needed was sleep. He hadn't gotten much the night before.

Toshinori struggled out of his hero suit, before pulling a loose t-shirt over his bony shoulders and crawling into bed. He was only in bed for a moment before he realized that sleep was going to be more difficult to obtain then he hoped and it had little to do with his actual level of fatigue. What air he could force into his lung while upright was seemingly completely cut off the second he tried to lay down. He couldn't breathe.

XXX

Rin snapped awake for the fourth or fifth time since laying down some hours before and sat up with a brief intake of breath. After a moment, the panic and disorientation subsided. She was safe, lying on the couch in her living room. No one was here. She had been dreaming about something, but she couldn't recall what, except that it had involved shadows and people screaming as they burned and the weird sensation that someone was watching.

Rin looked sideways at the television which was playing an old soap opera and then her eyes shifted to the front door, which she had dragged a cabinet in front of, since closing it properly was out of the question.

For a couple of years after High school, Rin had lived with Kaiya. The other woman had been baffled when she'd spent the first few weeks sleeping on the couch instead of her bed and her reasoning then was, in a broad sense, more or less the same as her reasoning now. She hadn't wanted to be in a room shut off from the exit. Not being able to see it made her uncomfortable and she wasn't able to relax if she couldn't. For the most part these days, she was able to ignore that irrational fear, but after the events of the previous evening, those insecurities came back in full, even after she'd gone through all of remaining alcohol in her fridge.

Rin scrabbled at her coffee table where her phone was sitting. Kaiya had sent her a few texts throughout the evening and she hadn't answered any of them. She skimmed through them again with a frown. They started out pretty casual, but the woman had become more frustrated the longer she failed to answer them.

**Do you want to get lunch tomorrow? **

**Are you still angry about last night?**

**Rin, I can see that you're reading these**

**and ignoring them. A** **re you doing that **

**thing where you aren't answering me because **

**you want to avoid talking about something? **

She groaned and fell back onto her pillow. At some point she would have to talk to Kaiya. There was just...so much to say and she didn't know where to start. After a couple of minutes of staring at the ceiling she raised her phone above her head and began to type a response.

**I was at that theater that was on**

**fire because of All Might. **

There...that seemed to cover it.

XXX

Since his injury and the time he spent in the hospital undergoing surgery after surgery removing pieces of his broken malfunctioning organs, Toshinori could mostly divide his overall health in good days and bad days. On the good days his cough was mild, he had a relatively normal appetite and the pain in his body was reduced to the ordinary pains associated with his ripening age and a mild ache in his side that he could mostly ignore. On the bad days he was nauseous, coughed up blood the way some people sneezed and endured pain that at times was so intense that it was difficult to think about anything else. More often though, it was some combination of the two. It was amazing how much the human body adapted and he had adapted to pain, had grown accustomed to the taste of iron and the sometimes drastic shifts in his health depending on how active he was during any given time.

Then there were the other days. The days that made the 'bad' days seem pleasant by comparison. There had been a lot of them in the beginning, but nowadays they were fewer and far between and were generally the result of him getting too carried away with his hero work, forcing his muscle form past it's limit...overdoing it. Unfortunately, It was starting to look like it might be one of those days.

Toshinori was coming to terms with the fact that he wasn't going to get any sleep. He had tried various positions, and had even tried to prop himself up so that he wasn't lying completely flat, but it didn't do any good. He was so tired that he could barely keep his eyes open, but the second he managed to even doze off for a second, he'd be shaken back into consciousness, choking, gasping for breath, or coughing. His remaining lung felt like it was on fire and anytime he started to cough he wasn't able to stop for several minutes, which inevitably led to gagging and retching. He was only able to calm his cough down by forcing himself to ignore the desperate impulse to do so and breathe slowly through his nose until the irritation in his throat and chest quieted down a bit and even then this brief respite would last for only twenty minutes or so.

The longest he managed to stay asleep was for maybe twenty minutes in the early morning, just as the light began to creep in through the window. He'd woken up confused and covered in sweat with his head hurting so bad that he could swear he felt his pulse in his temples. He then had coughed up a significant amount of blood on his pillow and after shivering for a few minutes under his blanket abandoned any further attempts at sleep altogether.

Toshinori had to force himself to get out of bed and the action came with a wave of dizziness and nausea, causing him to nearly losing his balance for a moment as he steadied himself against his dresser.

After the lightheadedness subsided a bit, he walked into the kitchen and searched through a cupboard where he kept his prescriptions, as well as over the counter pain killers, first aid supplies and various ointments for pain. He had acquired quite the assortment. He removed one of the stronger pain killers, some icy-hot and another ointment that was a cough suppressant before heading into the living room and collapsing onto the couch.

XXX

Rin's experience with her previous neighbors had been a test of willpower. The building she lived in didn't have especially thick walls and Rin's schedule was such that a loud neighbor could disrupt it easily. She had to go to bed early if she wanted to get any kind of sleep and the last people who had lived below her…hadn't. As far as she could tell they didn't sleep at all. She had never been able to discern what their exact relationship was. She wasn't sure if they were married or siblings…or just middle-aged roommates who really enjoyed shouting at each other, and it didn't matter because what they definitely were, was annoying.

Rin always had trouble sleeping without some sort of white noise to drown out distractions and perhaps, to a degree her own thoughts…but when they had lived below her, her bedroom had been a cacophony of various noises to obscure whatever they were screaming about. There had even been one or two particularly bad nights where she had glared at her ceiling and had thought treacherously about how easily her quirk could have remedied the situation. Maybe not to kill them, but remove enough air and they would at least pass out, right?

In the weeks since Mr. Yagi had moved in, she was relieved to find that he was a vast improvement in pretty much every way. He didn't seem to keep any company, didn't listen to loud music, didn't watch anything at a volume that permeated his own walls, hell for the most part, she couldn't even tell he was there. There had been a couple of times over the last couple of weeks that she'd heard him in the early morning, presumably, as he was just getting home. Oh, and occasionally she could hear him coughing, but that was like hearing the occasional car outside or laughter in a distant room. They were sounds that didn't even register as anything but background noise…giving the world some sort of texture.

Well…it had been anyways. For the past few hours the sound of him coughing had become a great deal more then background noise. Rin had moved back into her bedroom at around six in the morning when the sun started to come up and almost considered returning to the chorus of noise she'd used for her previous neighbors. The coughing was almost more unpleasant then their screaming had been, however, because it was hard not to feel her own throat tighten reflexively.

_'God, it sounds like he's dying,' _she thought as she turned over on her side and covered her head with her blanket, obscuring one ear with her arm. For a moment she laid still like that with her eyes closed before another thought sidled carefully into her head with as much grace as the final snowflake before an avalanche. _'Wait…he's not, right?'_

She opened her eyes again and stared at the far wall. She knew Mr. Yagi was sick, but it hadn't particularly occurred to her until now to wonder how sick he was. Was he so sick that it was possible he might actually be dying in the apartment below her? No…that was silly. She had seen him on the previous day…and he seemed ok.

_'Well, maybe his health took a turn for the worse after he followed you around the park for most of the afternoon,' _Rin scowled and hit the side of her head with the base of her palm. It was unfair how quickly her brain turned against her. It was probably fine. He probably just had a cold or something_. _She winced a little. A really bad cold…she already had a long list of things to worry about. There wasn't room to add Mr. Yagi to that list.

Unfortunately, her brain wouldn't let her drop the matter. The longer she lay there, the more she found herself tensing up every time she heard anything from the apartment below her and a low level of unease began to settle in her stomach. She knew that part of it was that she was already in a skewed enough frame of mind from the events of the last twelve hours, so that any worry was amplified and her paranoia, which already had a tendency to run rampant was allowed to positively thrive.

After her stomach was completely tied in knots and the prospect of relaxing became impossible, she gave up on trying to do so and decided it might be better to just get up and distract herself with something.

So, a few minutes later, she was in the kitchen making a pour over.

What sort of illness would cause someone to cough up blood? Kaiya was right, it was never a good sign, but what was the worst-case scenario? Whatever it was, it was most likely the reason for how painfully skinny he was as well. So…coughing up blood and severe weight loss.

She was snapped out of her thoughts unpleasantly when scalding liquid poured over her fingers as she mindlessly let her cup overflow. Rin hissed and shook the water from her hand, her brief movements causing her cup to rock slightly and more liquid to spill onto the countertop.

"Shit," she said as she threw away the filter and tipped some of the excess coffee into the sink.

She took the remainder into the living room and sat it on her coffee table before picking up her phone. There were a couple new texts from Kaiya. They were considerably more excitable then the previous few had been. Rin took a few minutes to answer them before setting her phone back down.

Whatever illness Mr. Yagi had would also be the reason he couldn't drink or have a lot of sugar...or maybe that was just a side effect? So coughing up blood, weight loss and diet restrictions. She could just…look his symptoms up. Otherwise she would just keep wondering about it.

As she started to drink her coffee, she eyed her phone again. After a few seconds of debate, she picked it up and started doing some cursory searches on the web. Unsurprisingly, this didn't have the calming effect she hoped for.

She should have stopped after the first site, which had had a symptom checker with a cute graphic where various body parts could be selected, and symptoms could be added. What was less cute was the red flashing blip that had popped up after she had started writing with the message that read;

**Warning! These symptoms are an indication of a potentially severe and life-threatening condition, please seek immediate medical attention. **

Rin glared at the message for a moment before exiting out of the site and trying another. After about an hour of searching she shut off her phone with frustration and set it back on the table. The two most commonly occurring results she'd come up with were a variety of cancers, with lung cancer being the most likely and tuberculosis. It...probably wasn't tuberculosis. Regardless, it had done nothing for her nerves except to make them worse.

It was for this reason that even though she really didn't feel like having company and didn't wish to talk about the previous evening, she was nevertheless grateful for the distraction when Kaiya knocked on her door in the early afternoon.

After she'd hoisted the cabinet out of the way and had made a cup of coffee for the other woman and another to replace the one that had gotten cold while she had been looking at various medical sites they both sat in her living room, while Kaiya rested her chin in her hand and tried to untangle Rin's confusedly inept account of the last 48 hours.

"Ok, hold on…so All Might was raking leaves in Shizuka Park and then you followed him to a burning theater…why was he raking leaves and...when did he break into your apartment?"

"No, those were different days. The park was two days ago, and I'm still not convinced that wasn't a fever dream. The fire was yesterday. He broke my door last night." Rin said as she sipped at her coffee and stared glumly forward. After spending a couple hours the previous night more or less sitting on the ground and having a panic attack and then another couple of hours drinking, she had achieved a state on the far reaches of hysteria where it was difficult to muster any kind of emotion at all because she felt she'd already had all of them.

"So, he broke in…and then...you went to a burning building...with All Might?"

"Technically he knocked the first time…he broke in after the burning building because I didn't have my keys."

"I think I need you to start again," Kaiya said after a moment. "Also…it's kind of loud in here, do you mind turning down your tv a little?" Rin sighed.

"No," she said after a moment. "I didn't actually plan on processing through this today, Kaiya. I was just going to get really drunk and have a quiet mental breakdown."

Kaiya gave her one of her looks.

"You know that isn't a real plan, right?"

"Sounds pretty good to me," she mumbled. "Anyways, I only had enough beer to get kind of drunk…just made it all weirder."

There was silence, or as much as there could be with a bad soap opera being played at an extremely uncomfortable volume as Kaiya eyed her for a moment. Finally she grabbed at the remote sitting on the top of the couch and turned the television off. Rin winced.

"God, I wish he'd stop coughing," she said below her breath.

"What?"

"Nothing, listen…just…I don't want to talk about the theater right now, okay?"

"What about All Might? Would you like to talk about him?"

"Hell no," Rin said.

Kaiya sat back on Rin's couch with a sigh and eyed the ceiling for a moment.

"Are you okay? I mean apart from the drinking and the scheduled mental breakdown?"

Rin gave her a brief uni-shrug.

"Yes...I don't know. I mean, I think fire is bad for my asthma, but it's been mostly fine."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm proud of you," Kaiya said finally before taking a drink of her own coffee. Rin gave her an exasperated look.

"What? Why? What a weird thing for you to say…"

"I mean don't get me wrong, I'm worried, really I found your texts incredibly upsetting…and I'm probably going to try to convince you to stay over at our house tonight, but I read some of the stories on that fire. I mean…I always thought hero work would suit you."

Ah, so it was this again. Rin scowled.

"Well it doesn't, okay?" she snapped back. "It was awful, and I don't plan on doing it again. I didn't get any lovely warm feelings…you know apart from the…warm feelings of almost being set on fire and I'm not glad that I did any of it."

Kaiya watched this outburst calmly before taking another sip of coffee.

"Give me your hand."

"Kaiya, I swear to god," Rin started. "I swear to god if you use your quirk on me right now, I'll…I'll show up at your classroom and be awkward and curse and stuff in front of your students!"

Kaiya covered her mouth for a moment either out of frustration or amusement. Still the woman relented.

"Relax, I'm not going to do it when you're this upset, it would be like sticking my hand in a socket."

"I'm not a hero, Kaiya and before you bring it up…" she added as the other woman started to open her mouth, "when I saved you back in Highschool it wasn't because I gave a shit…I mean…obviously…I do now…but back then it was just…reflexes…I wasn't thinking about it." The woman continued to watch her with that annoyingly calm expression.

"All Right," Kaiya said after a moment. "We don't have to talk about it…for now. But...you know where to find me if you change your mind."

"I know," Rin said quietly.

They sat in silence for a while. She'd been friends with Kaiya for long enough so that uncomfortable silences no longer existed with her. Rin drank her coffee and tried to enjoy the silence. Eventually, she turned the television back on and they watched horrible soap operas for a couple of hours and Kaiya ordered takeout and practically forced it on her when she learned she hadn't eaten for much of the day.

When it started to get dark, Rin dragged the cabinet away from the door again so that Kaiya could leave.

"So…is there any chance of me convincing you to come over tonight?"

"I'll be all right," Rin said after a pause. She always had a horrible time trying to sleep in beds that weren't hers. Tonight would probably not offer many improvements over the previous night in terms of sleep, but moving locations wouldn't change that. There was a silence as Kaiya gave her a look of exasperation and she carefully ignored it. Normally Kaiya broke these silences, but this time Rin did so, with something that, as it were, had been on her mind for much of the day.

"How many people have tuberculosis these days?"

Judging by the way Kaiya's expression changed, this was not a question she'd been expecting.

"Uh…I don't...know…why?"

"I was just wondering," she said. When Kaiya continued to stare at her, she sighed a little. "I've been hearing Mr. Yagi coughing since this morning...a lot…I mean more than usual. I just…you know…just wondering," she added the last in a mumble.

Understanding dawned on the other woman's face.

"Ah," she said while turning her head to the side a little and eyeing her friend for a couple of seconds. "I mean, if you're worried about it, just ask him."

"What, you mean…walk up to him and say; 'Hey, you seem pretty sick, I was just wondering if you have tuberculosis, or some other horrible illness?'" Rin said sarcastically as she crossed her arms against the cold that was emanating from her open door.

"Well, obviously I wouldn't put it like that. I meant you could just ask him if he's all right?"

"No! I'm not going to do that!"

"Your right," Kaiya said after a moment while rolling her eyes. "Much better to just keep worrying about it." Rin scowled, but didn't comment. "Listen, if something crazy or traumatic happens to you again, call me please," she added while hugging Rin goodbye. "It can be very frustrating when the only time I get an explanation from you is when I'm trying to translate your drunk texts."

"I don't drunk text you that often," Rin muttered. She didn't add that some of those 'drunk texts' had probably been when she was sober and was just bad at articulating something.

"Of course," Kaiya said as she headed down the stairs. "Normally you just avoid conversation altogether…which is also _extremely_ healthy behavior."

After Rin dragged the cabinet back in front of the door she headed to the bathroom. She'd taken a shower early that morning when it had occurred to her that she smelled like ten bonfires. Now she filled the bath, hoping that it would help her relax a little and make sleep easier to achieve. She briefly went through a shelf before finding an assortment of bath salts Kaiya had given her in her efforts to 'find things that would relax her, that wasn't just more alcohol.' She emptied a significant amount into the tub and then once it was filled, she turned off the water and laid back, her black hair falling over the colorful tiles and soaking slightly at the ends. The silence was broken only by the remaining drops of water falling from the faucet. She sat like that for several minutes. In that time, it occurred to her that she hadn't heard Mr. Yagi cough for a while. That should have been a relief…but it wasn't, it really wasn't.

Rin opened her eyes and nearly tripped on the side of the tub as she struggled to get out and then did trip on the water that had sloshed over the edge onto the floor due to her hasty exit, which caused her to run into the bathroom door. She righted herself with a groan and began to gather her clothes up, before pulling the stricken garments on with the frustration of someone trying to make something fit properly over wet limbs.

As she exited the bathroom, she grabbed the first pair of shoes she could find, hopping on one foot as she yanked them on and running into furniture in the process. Once they were more or less on her feet, she grabbed her jacket and shoved the cabinet aside again.

XXX

Toshinori blinked and felt a tremor through his body as he underwent the brief sensation of falling that came with dozing off while upright before coming violently back into wakefulness. He was sitting on his couch with a blanket over his shoulders and had been in a state of semi consciousness for the last couple of hours, with his thoughts running from completely nonsensical to mildly rational as his brain weaved in and out of the partial sleep state.

The most recent though he'd had was something akin to; _My insides are on fire...best get Miss Hajime to put them out. _Then he'd frowned. _What? _He was certain he was running a fever, but hadn't actually taken the time to find out for sure.

He gazed blearily through his blond bangs. The sun was going down, so the room was mostly dark, with the only light being from his television, which for once was not turned to the news and was instead on a random channel that played old movies. His eyes fell to his coffee table, which was littered with blood covered tissues. In addition to these, there was a glass of water and a cup of tea that had most certainly gone cold by now. Near the table was a wastebasket. At some point in the day he had tried eating and thus far hadn't been able to keep anything down apart from a few mouthfuls of tea. Everything else had come back up almost immediately.

Toshinori's body shook briefly with a weak cough. It down to a wheeze at this point because he couldn't muster the energy to do more than that. And everything from his throat down to his absent stomach felt raw. Even this caused a jolt of pain throughout his entire midsection.

Once the pain subsided a bit, he rubbed at his forehead with a shaky hand and then jumped slightly as heard a knock on the door. For a moment he wondered if he'd actually heard it, or if it was just his head pounding. After hearing a second knock, he groaned and started to shrug the blanket off his shoulders.

Not many people knew where he lived, so it was either something unimportant, or very important. Unfortunately, he couldn't take the risk if it was the latter. Toshinori grabbed a fresh tissue and dipped it in the glass of water, wiping the corners of his mouth to remove any potential remnants of blood that might have still been lingering. He then gathered it and the other tissues on the table and threw them away. He also picked up the water itself and washed his mouth out before eyeing it and throwing the whole thing, cup and all in the trash as well. Afterwards, he got to his feet slowly, bracing himself on his couch in the process and closing his eyes against the wave of inevitable dizziness that followed.

"Coming," he said hoarsely as he opened them again. On the way to the front door he stashed the trashcan out of sight.

XXX

Rin got all the way down the stairs and knocked on Mr. Yagi's door twice before her panic subsided a bit and rational thought crept back in. It occurred to her that she had no idea what she was actually going to say. Suppose he _had _just caught a bad cold? Then what? Should she just try to think of an excuse really quickly or go with Kaiya's suggestion and casually ask after his health? It probably didn't matter what she decided, as the reality would most likely be her sputtering nonsense and hoping for the best.

On the other hand, what if he didn't answer? Or couldn't? Should she risk trying to call for help and hope that Mr. Yagi wasn't just in bed or something?

_This was a bad idea..._

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard someone undoing the locks on the other side of the door and she felt a wave of panic as it swung open.

Whatever excuse, inquiry or string of barely audible words she was prepared to communicate, they died in her throat upon seeing him.

Despite his skeletal frame and sunken eyes Mr. Yagi nevertheless gave the impression of someone with a spark of life in him. Between his smile, his good-natured enthusiasm that somehow wasn't grating and his baffling optimism, his personality was weirdly infectious. None of that was apparent right now. Granted, 'healthy' was probably not a word she'd use to describe him, but at least he generally didn't look as if he were about to fall over.

His eyes were bloodshot and slightly vacant, the dazzling blue of his irises dulled by exhaustion. Some level of bewilderment managed to break through, however as he looked at her.

"Rin," he said, his voice hoarse and a few octaves deeper than usual. He cleared his throat a little and then grimaced. "Uh what can I do for you?" He sounded out of breath. In fact, she could _hear _him breathing.

Rin continued to stand there, frozen, as her brain attempted to catch up. In the silence, he shifted a little. He was wearing a loose t-shirt that was falling over one shoulder and exposing a pronounced collarbone as well as a pair of loose sweatpants. Both garments hung from him even more awkwardly then usual due to his current posture.

_God, Rin, please say something, _she thought as she stood there at his door, with her mouth partially open. _Anything...even nonsense would be preferable to whatever it is your doing right now. _

"Er…I…I…heard…I mean…I can…hear you…coughing from upstairs," she managed finally. There was a brief silence as he processed this. He swallowed and grimaced again.

"Oh, sorry," he said. "I'll try to keep it down." Rin stared at him.

"You'll…keep it down…" she repeated slowly.

"Yes, I didn't realize..."

"I'm not here to complain!" she interrupted him. She hadn't intended to shout, but she'd found the idea that he would apologize for suffering too loudly somewhat exasperating. He started a little, once again eyeing her with bewilderment. "Do you…need…help?" She added awkwardly. A brief pained expression crossed his face.

"Ah...no. I'm...uh, just not feeling very well today."

_Understatement, _Rin thought. He smelled strongly of sweat and something else that could only be describe as...illness and the more she looked at him, the more apparent it became that the only reason Mr. Yagi was upright was out of sheer willpower. He was pale and his skin had an unhealthy sheen to it and he was shaking ever so slightly with the effort that answering the door had required. She wasn't good at this. Kaiya was much better equipped for this kind of thing. She knew how to treat a situation with delicacy while also maintaining some level of control. All Rin knew how to do was be direct or make everyone uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she made an attempt.

"Yeah," she said finally. "You uh...maybe you should see a doctor?"

"It's not as bad as it probably looks," he said, while giving her a thoroughly unconvincing smile.

"Well, it looks like you're about to collapse," she snapped back. "So is it less worse then that?"

He started to respond, possibly even to argue but presumably whatever restraint he had been employing up until then in order to have this conversation with her, gave out on him as he started to cough. He braced one hand on the doorframe and covered his mouth with the other. It was not unlike the evening after he'd moved in, when he'd gone into a coughing fit in front of her at the bottom of the stairs. But this was somehow worse, the sort of cough that hurt just to listen to and it only got worse from there as a spray of blood coated his fingers and the front of his t-shirt. Rin recoiled as she felt a few drops hit the side of her arm and then watched him with mounting panic as he struggled for breath.

Apart from that one instance at the park, she hadn't used her quirk on another person in years. There were too many factors that went into it, too many risks. She might grudgingly ponder using it on her annoying neighbors in the early hours of the morning, but she wouldn't have actually done it…well she probably wouldn't have anyways. It was too easy to take a little too much. Her father had only taught her how to take and Rin wondered, in the years after his arrest if it was because that was all he had been able to do. Ultimately, however, her quirk was about moving oxygen, not taking it and at a time like this, well maybe it was better to just not think about it.

So, before she could fully process what she intended to do, she moved towards him again and held her breath as she placed both hands, palm down on his chest. The important thing was to focus, it was just a place to dump the oxygen he was already trying to breath. His coughing gradually ceased, and after it did she felt his chest rise under her fingers. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of locking eyes with him. Even in his distressed state, Mr. Yagi was eyeing her with apparent shock. This cleared, however and was slowly replaced by an expression of relief. She held his gaze for a moment, becoming increasingly aware of the fact that a couple of her fingers were pressed against the bare skin of his collarbone and that she could feel his heartbeat.

She snapped out of it when he blinked a little and nearly lost his balance. Rin removed her hands quickly.

"Sorry," she said. "Too much." He'd caught himself on the doorway.

"You can give oxygen too," he said after he seemed to regain some awareness. He was looking at her with a soft expression that made her face feel uncomfortably warm. His voice was still hoarse, but at least he wasn't straining with every word.

"What?" Rin said with a frown.

"Nothing...thank you" he said as he wiped at his mouth and then eyed his hand with some dismay. "I'm sorry I..." he added after a moment. Now that he wasn't focusing all of his energy into breathing, some level of embarrassment was starting to settle into his features. "I'll...uh...get dressed and call a cab."

A cab, not an ambulance, she noted. After he retreated back into his apartment Rin stood there for a moment before finally breaking away and heading slowly back up the stairs. She stopped at her door, which was slightly ajar and after a second of staring at it, closed it as best as she could given the damage, before sighing, heading back down the stairs and sitting on the bottom step.

XXX


End file.
